Practical Truths
Walter Thomas Turpin
Table of Contents
“Waiting”
There is a great difference in the way the above subject is looked at by the blessed Lord in Luke 12 and John 16. Both these conditions of heart and soul, namely, the one enjoined in Luke and that enjoined in John, ought to be found in the saints at this present time. Luke regards us as going through a hostile scene, even this poor ruined world, and therefore there is the moral condition of heart looked for (as Luke’s gospel always takes up the moral side of things) in view of the Lord’s coming. He is absent, and while we are waiting for Him to come, we have that word, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” That is a blessed word, “It is your Father’s good pleasure.” Here in this world is the very scene of the Father’s interest and care, watchfulness and love. We are in the wilderness, where we want it; by-and-by we shall be in a place where we shall not want it; this is one thing that makes the wilderness so blessed; it is the only spot where God can show us how He cares for us. We shall not want His care in heaven, because we shall have exchanged all the circumstances where we needed it for His presence, where is fulness of joy; there no care can come. This wilderness world, on the contrary, is the place of care; and I do not know anything that sits heavier upon us than care. The Lord puts care along with a number of other things that we would never think of classing with it—“The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches.” Any one would say riches are deceitful things; but cares are as choking as riches; I do not mean cares about wrong things, but cares about right things. It is, in truth, a slight upon our Father’s interest that we should carry them; and the Lord, looking at us in the spot where they abound, says, “Fear not.” Suppose you are few or little, you have a Father, and the good pleasure of His heart is to be a Father to you; that is the meaning of it. It is His delight to be a Father, and to do a Father’s part by us. It is the very same word that is used in another place, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”; and the same word, too, in Luke 2, when the heavens gave that blessed One out to the earth, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men.” In Luke, then, it is God’s good pleasure to do a Father’s part to me. “Fear not.” I need not have any anxiety or trouble about anything; it sets me free. Whilst I am in the presence of such things, I am liberated from them. Verse 34 is a sort of junction between Luke and John, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Though, you will observe, Luke never carries you out of the present, but looks for moral condition in you suited to the circumstances; then you get, “Let your loins be girded about and your lights burning.” Now, there are two things that become us while passing through this present world; we want the girdle and the lamp. We shall not want the girdle and the light in heaven—we shall be in a place where no girdle will be needed, and where it is all brightness—but we want the girdle here. What a moment it will be when we are in the consciousness of having been introduced into a place where a girdle will not be needed. You cannot let your affections out now, you will smart for it if you do; but there we can let them out without let or hindrance, because everything will suit the presence of God, and we shall have dropped the thing that constantly seeks a place of prominence in us now, and we shall not need the lamp which we do want here. There is something very beautiful in that little word, “Let your loins be girded about.” Does it not challenge us in many ways? Are we circumspect? Are the affections and spiritual judgment braced up? Does the world see in me the bearing, the likeness of a person that is waiting for Christ? Are we like unto men that wait for their lord? I grant you it may be said, “We do wait for Him”; but does that produce a moral effect upon us? Think of what a man waiting for his lord would exhibit in all his ways; everything in readiness, everything prepared, nothing unsettled, the eye free, the heart free, and the affections going out towards that one spot from whence His well-known presence will come forth. We are to be the expression of it; our very appearance, as it were, is to testify of this to the world—everything packed up and sent on before, and we ourselves waiting only for Christ. “Like unto men that wait for their lord,” is a very practical word, and one which should touch our hearts; and let me say that anything which contravenes it in connection with our circumstances in this world ought not to be allowed, because it is not only that I am to be waiting for Christ, but the moral impress of that is to display itself in my actions and circumstances. “Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching”; and then most remarkable words follow: “Verily I say unto you, he shall gird himself and make them to sit down to meat, and shall come forth and serve them.” Think of the grace of His heart, who, whilst He keeps alive by His Spirit the sense of watchfulness, rewards us for what is the fruit of His own love. If we do watch, what is it? It is the fruit of a love whose watching is unfailing. We are not to sit down now, we are to be on the watch; but when He does release us, He will say, “Now you can sit down, now I am coming forth to serve.” Christ never gives up the servant’s place—He is a servant for ever. What a wonderful thing! the Son of God came down into this world, and became a servant, and will never give it up.
Are you and I walking like the heirs of such things as these? “He shall gird himself; and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.” That is the way Luke speaks of the coming of the Lord. Now let us turn for a moment to John; there we get it in another way. We do not find a moral condition looked for as in Luke, but we are in the presence of a higher thing; both ought to be found together in us. In John it is not so much the Lord speaking of His coming to us here, but, on the contrary, it is His going away. In Luke it is as if He said, “I am coming back”; in John, “I am going away; I am about to transfer your hopes and expectations to another place.” Then in John 14, He speaks of the Father’s house. Now we know but in part what kind of a place the Father’s house will be: it is the best that His love could give, and will in all respects answer to that love; but we do know the Father’s heart, we know Himself: it is by this love all is measured, but there is no measure to the love itself; it passes knowledge. All the Father’s heart has been manifested in the Son of His love; and we know the house will be commensurate with who from the first is looked at as rejected and refused, departs out of this world, goes on high, thus transferring our hearts and hopes into that bright and blessed place where He Himself is; and tells us if He goes away He will come again and receive us unto Himself, that where He is there we may be also. He goes away, that we may no longer be detained as to our affections where He is not; oh, how little are we thus sanctified by His absence! (See John 16:19.) How little do we mourn His absence here! not only reminded of Him by His Spirit, but longing for His return, who won our hearts in humiliation, and satisfied them in glory.
This twofold condition of soul, beloved, ought, I judge, to be found in us at this present moment; that, looked at as passing through the wilderness, we are to walk it girded and with the expectancy and bright the thought of His coming in our hearts, watching and ready. There is something blessed in the thought of a vigil-keeper, awake and alert; when all around is asleep and buried in rest, he is watching, he has the light, and his heart is expecting his Lord. Is that the next thing that is before us, the dearest and brightest vision filling our sight? What an effect it would have on us! I feel it would separate us from a thousand things, it would carry our interests out of earth. And is that too much? Is it too much to say that the blessed One who came down here, has gone up to heaven, and has translated my affections into that bright and blessed place where He my Lord is?
The Lord by His Spirit, beloved, give us to know what these things mean, to walk with girded loins; and burning lamps, and expecting hearts, through this world, and to be able to do so all the easier because our treasure, even the Lord Jesus Christ, has gone into heaven, in all the perfection of that glory of which He Himself is the brightness, for His own name’s sake.
“A little while,” the Lord shall come,
And we shall wander here no more;
He’ll take us to His Father’s home,
Where He for us has gone before:
To dwell with Him and see His face,
And sing the glories of His grace.
“A little while”—He’ll come again,
Let us the precious hours redeem;
Our only grief to give Him pain,
Our joy to serve and follow Him.
Watching and ready may we be,
As those that wait their Lord to see.
“A little while—twill soon be past,
Why should we shun the promised cross?
O let us in His footsteps haste,
Counting for Him all else but loss:
For how will recompense His smile,
The sufferings of this “little while.”
“A little while”—come, Savior, come!
For Thee Thy bride has tarried long;
Take Thy poor waiting pilgrims home,
To sing the new eternal song:
To see Thy glory, and to be
In everything conformed to Thee.
J. G. Deck
The Wilderness - the Land, the Lessons of Each
Deuteronomy 8:1-9; 11:10-12; 26:1-11
You will find two very different experiences recorded in chs. 8 and 9 of this book. Ch. 8 sets before us the wilderness and its lessons. If I think of it as the place where every Christian is, though it is true also he belongs to heaven (seated in heavenly places in Christ), yet looking at the wilderness as the scene through which we are passing, the object and purport of it are clearly discernible.
In heaven there will be no broken hearts, no trials, no hunger, no thirst; but here the blessed God finds a place such as this is suited to display His heart as equal to it all; that the difficulties, the trials and sorrows, through which His people pass, do but afford Him the occasion for showing how He can care for His own. The blessed God charged Himself with the clothes and feet of His people these forty years! How wonderful! It is the greatness of His love that enables Him to enter into it all—nothing too great and nothing too small for His care and interest. We on our side need the wilderness; it is a place in which dependence and subjection are put to the test. “Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee, and know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell these forty years.”
Now this is the wilderness; it is connected with God’s ways with His people: and as I have observed, it is here we learn dependence and subjection. It was all a sandy waste before them and behind them, and just the place for them to learn how to lean on Him; “that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.”
It is wonderful, surely, how little we are cast on God; no matter how varied our circumstances are, there is one common point to be found in all our histories alike, namely, independence. It was independence in the first Adam in paradise, when he thought he could do better than God had done for him.
There is not one solitary thing in this world that ministers to you as a child of God, as a new creature in Christ Jesus. You are to count on God and none but God. The Lord Jesus Christ, as a man, was perfect in dependence and obedience. The first man in the garden of Eden, surrounded by all the tokens and marks of God’s care, displayed his perfect independence: the second Man in the wilderness, without any subsidy, is perfect in dependence. He recommended, morally, the history of the nation. “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” (See Hos. 11:1; Matt. 2:15.) They were in the wilderness; He was in the wilderness: only they broke down and failed everywhere—He was perfect in it all. Christ recovered everything for God and secured every blessing for His own. Have we learned what it is, day by day, and moment by moment, to live by every word of God? There is nothing but restlessness and unreality in all around us; no quiet, no repose.
What a path that of dependence is! What would straits and difficulties be to a man that walked in that road? What were they to Caleb and Joshua? They were bread for them, and they could not be less than bread for us. What a wonderful display: the blessed God showing me He is above difficulties, and faith feeding upon them! The second lesson of the wilderness is subjection: how few of us know what it is! I do not mean resignation; resignation means that you endure it because you cannot help it; subjection, that you fall in with the will of God as the delight of your heart. The wilderness is the scene where the will may be constantly crossed; and that is just the place to elicit the subjection of your heart. See its perfection in the second Adam (Matt. 11), “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” And this, observe, was at a moment when all had failed to meet His longing, loving heart. John doubted His being the Messiah; Israel refused Him; and the cities which had witnessed His mightiest works repented not. What a wonderful thing for the heart to find its rest in the fact that God has had His way! It is not that I cannot help it, but my joy and satisfaction when the will of God triumphs at my cost. If not so, when our desires are interrupted, our pathway broken in upon (it may be in good things, that were only the energy of the natural will), how disappointed with ourselves, (and shall I say it?) how almost disappointed with God; heart- broken oneself; and with the dreadful sensation of being disappointed with God! Oh, to be glad that God would have His own way, even if it breaks in upon cherished hopes and prospects; but nothing will impart this to us save implicit obedience and subjection, and a faith that will trust Him in the dark. “As for God, his way is perfect.” “Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.” Not a single affection of His heart is kept back or unexpressed; read them in the light of the sorrows of the heart of Jesus, and you will find how it will cheer you passing through the valley of the shadow of death. “Thou leddest thy people like a flock.” Who is it that leads His sheep, keeps them in His hand, and watches over them day by day? There is but One, and His name one.
The Lord give us to draw the reason of His ways with us from the knowledge of His heart, then His will shall be our delight.
The end of ch. 8 describes the land as it is in itself; it is a region of plenty and satisfied desire. “A land of wheat and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil, olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.”
But in Deut 9. the land is described in its contrast. In Egypt there is trouble connected with the best of things; they had trouble to procure the fertilizing streams of the Nile; Canaan, on the contrary, drank water of the rain of heaven, and the eyes of God were always on it, from the beginning to the end of the year.
The very best thing you possess in this world has trouble connected with it; who can tell when we may lose it? The sweeping desolations of death may come in upon it; and increased happiness does but widen the target at which death shoots his arrows. I may die to them or they may die to me; here we are in the presence of death; there we shall be in the presence of Christ.
The only place that can command or detain the eye of God now, is the spot where that blessed One is, and there I go to remember my sorrow no more; by faith I am now introduced into it, and share His joy. I love to think He cares for me in the wilderness; still I love to think He says, you shall know another place the exact contrast to it. Now what is to engage us in this place of rest and satisfaction? This we have in Deut. 26. “When thou art come in and possessest it, and dwellest therein.” Every Christian has come in, but then it is another thing to take practical possession, or make it our own; and to dwell is to make it our home. Are you rather a visitor to earth upon His business, and a dweller in that home? A stranger here—at home there? In Christendom the effort is to be what they are not. No one can work themselves up to be heavenly. I am to walk here in the sense of what I am in Christ. Do you dwell there? Have you possessed it? Can you say, Thank God, He has brought me in, given me possession, and now I dwell there; and the spot I possess is the very place where the Beloved One of God is crowned?
Thus we have looked at the wilderness and the land, the objects and purports of each. May our hearts largely profit by the lessons of both, while we have deeper and larger apprehensions by the Holy Ghost of our present place on high in Christ before God, as well as one with Him in glory, for His name’s sake. Amen.
“O Lord, how blest our journey,
Tho’ here on earth we roam,
Who find in Abba’s favor,
Our spirits’ present home:
For where Thou now art sitting
By faith we’ve found repose,
Free to look up to heaven,
Since Thou our Head arose.
“In spirit there already,
Soon we ourselves shall be,
In soul and body perfect,
All glorified, with Thee:
Thy Father’s smiles are cheering
The brief, but thorny way,
Thy Father’s house, the dwelling
Made ready for that day.
“The Comforter, now present,
Assures us of Thy love:
He is the blessed earnest
Of glory there above:
The river of Thy pleasure
Is what sustains us now;
Till Thy new name’s imprinted
On every sinless brow.
“Lord, we await Thy glory,
We have no home but there;
Where the adopted family,
With us Thy joy shall share;—
No place can fully please us,
Where Thou, O Lord, art not;
In Thee and with Thee ever,
Is found, by grace, our lot.”
Reality
Judges 7:1-8
It is an immense comfort to meet with reality in this world, where everything is so confused, and there are so many mixed motives at work. God looks for reality. Nothing less suits His mind, or meets His thoughts. In the scripture which heads this page there are deeply solemn lessons on this subject, which we do well to ponder. May the Lord Himself, by His Spirit, teach us, making our hearts willing and subject to His word. In the previous chapter we find the Lord getting His instrument ready for His work. This is a principle of the deepest value. God’s instruments must not only be raised up by God Himself; they must be adapted and fitted by Himself for the work He has for them. Abundant instances and illustrations of this are to be found in the word. We shall only refer to one. God it was who raised up the man Moses to be the deliverer of His people Israel out of their cruel bondage. Of this Moses we read, “And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). Nature would say, What a fitted, prepared weapon God has now at His hand! But this is the very thought which is short of the mind of God: for He will not, and does not accredit the qualifications of Egypt, but sends Moses to school (as we would say) for forty years, in order that he may be fitted and prepared and qualified for the work God has for him to do. Oh, what reality there is in all this. How real is the fact that God’s instruments must learn in God’s school. There is no such thing, reader, as purchasing commissions in His army; there all must rise from the ranks.
Now, in the history before us, the same principle is found. God raises up Gideon, the son of Joash the Abiezrite, that through him God might deliver Israel out of the hand of the Midianites. His family is poor in Manasseh, and like David, he is the least in his father’s house. Yet, what of all this? “Have not I sent thee?” withers up all such thoughts, and places a living reality before the soul.
Reader, have we known this? It is an easy thing in these days to put on an appearance before one another, and even to keep up, but do our own souls know the deep reality of having to do with the living God? And here remark that what is so sweet in the exercises of soul to which the words, “Have not I sent thee?” and “Surely I will be with thee,” were a reply, is that what occupied the mind of Gideon was the relation between God and His people. “If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?” Now let us turn and look at the steps—shall I say the forms?—of the school of God, in which this mighty man of valor was trained, and see how reality marks it all.
First.—The relationship of peace must be set up between him and God. He is brought into the presence of God, and hears these words: “Peace unto thee,” fear not. Sweet, precious words! O what reality.
Secondly.—As it was with himself; so must it be with his own family, namely, the relationship with God must be set up; and hence Gideon is set to work at home before he is sent out abroad. “And it came to pass the same night that the Lord said unto him Take thy father’s young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it; and build an altar unto the Lord thy God on the top of this rock, in the ordered place and take the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down” (Judg. 6:25, 26). Reader, what a searching principle is found here! God’s weapons are set to cut down the evil at home before they are used to cut it down abroad. It is the principle of 2 Tim. 2:21: “If a man therefore purge himself from these (see v. 21), he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.” There must not be in the Lord’s vessel that which is unsuited to the Lord. It is true that in the sovereignty of God He condescends to use a variety of means to bring about His own purposes. But this is not the thought of being a vessel for God, sanctified and meet for His use. What God looks for in His servants and people is reality. To use the expressive language of another God does not want “a lifeless finger-board to point along a way he neither leads nor follows.” He does want and desire one who is “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus,” who can endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ who warreth, not entangling himself with the affairs of this life, and who laboreth as an husbandman, having first been partaker the fruits. This is all reality, and this God looks for. He finds it in Gideon, the fruit, too, of His own gracious work with him. And now let us see how God looks for reality in the people who follow Gideon. He cannot trust His honor to the thirty-two thousand, they are too many for Him. What a solemn rebuke to the very thought that rises earliest and is cultivated latest in the natural mind. God will test that crowd. It cannot be that all are true to Him, some will surely go back. And so it is. When the ordinance of Deut. 20 is gone through, which simply set each one to count the cost—to do, as it were, a sum in profit and loss—out of the thirty-two thousand, only ten thousand are found ready to stand in the face of danger and loss. But God has not yet finished. He says, “The people are yet too many for me.” Most deeply solemn words these. Reader, He must work in a way which will leave no room for doubt that it is His hand that has wrought. So that the heart that is true to Him can say, “The Lord has done great things for us already.” And why? Because He well knew there was in Israel a haughty uplifted spirit that would credit themselves with victory. And now, mark, there is great force in the Lord’s words a second time to Gideon: “The people are yet too many; bring them down to the water, and I will try them for thee THERE; and it shall be that of whom I say unto thee, this shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, this shall not go with thee, the same shall not go. So he brought down the people unto the water; and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down on his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men; but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water.” The significance of all this is striking! Out of the ten thousand which the previous testing had left, only three hundred are found to stand before and rise superior to the new test. And mark it attentively, reader, there are a greater number equal to the difficulty and danger than there are equal to what we may call the blessing; or, many who are able to face the danger fall before the blessing. But some one may say, What do you mean by all this? Was it wrong for thirsty people to drink water? Surely not. And that is not the point in the history at all, for the three hundred upon whom God set His seal of approval drank as well as the nine hundred and seven thousand who were sent away; but the point is, they used the water in passing, but were not engaged with it; the water which quenched their thirst and refreshed their body was not that which occupied their minds—they had not time to halt, their hearts were in the work—they were real and they exhibited reality. And, reader, has not this a solemn application to us in this day! How many a soul there who rises superior to difficulties that utterly breaks down in the presence of prosperity, or a position where they are well to do. Alas! how true it is that few of us can be trusted in sunshine (that is, when all is smooth around us). When tested by the Lord, those who bowed down were not fit for His use, any more than those who were sent back through fear or loss. And this is just the testing of the present hour, for God is bringing out the three hundred who are occupied with that which occupies Him. It is reality we need, dear reader. There is no lack in our day of head knowledge—this is readily acquired, easily got up. Not only so, but nature likes it all, and turns it round to selfish purposes. In my mind, nothing is more sad or solemn than to see the way in which not a few, now-a-days, can talk about truth, and argue about it, who are themselves its living contradictions. Reality! reality! is the crying need of the day! Oh, reader, to be one of Christ’s three hundred in this day of His rejection—to have found in Himself the real secret of superiority, not only to the difficulties and dangers, but as well to the prosperity, ease, and quiet of this day. Oh, to be in earnest—to be real for Christ. To have, I do not say low thoughts of self; but no thoughts of self at all, all thoughts fixed on Himself, the alone source and spring and channel of every blessing. Reader, be assured of it, in the history of every Christian, there is a time when he or she is being brought down to the water. When it is so, the Lord give us that occupation with Himself, and His thoughts, which will bear us above and carry us over the trial, and exhibit in that reality which is alone worthy of Him.
Jesus, we our cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee,
All things else for Thee forsaken,
Thou from hence our all shalt be.
Perish every fond ambition,
All we’ve sought, or hoped, or known!
Yet! how rich is our condition,
While we prove the Lord our own.
Let the world despise and leave us,
They have left the Savior, too;
Human hearts and looks deceive us,
Thou art not, like them, untrue:
And, while Thou dost smile upon us,
God of wisdom, love, and might,
Foes may hate, and friends disown us –
Show Thy face, and all is bright.
Man may trouble and distress us,
‘Twill but drive us to Thy breast;
Life with trials hard may press us,
Heaven will bring us sweeter rest.
O ‘tis not in grief to harm us,
While Thy love is full and free;
O ‘twere not in joy to charm us,
Were that joy unmix’d with Thee.
“at His Feet”
We find Mary at the feet of Jesus on three different occasions in her history, each one full of the deepest comfort and instruction. Let us look a little at them in their order.
That which stands first in moral order, is found in Luke 10.
Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
There is something very blessed in the way in which her position and occupation are here described, she sat, and she heard; she had found out, in her measure at least, somewhat of His attractions, and her heart was restful enough to be quiet and still before Him, she could afford to sit at His feet. Alas! how little there is of that among us—so little real repose of heart and soul, and therefore so little real waiting on the Lord without distraction. It is an utter impossibility to make the Lord our one object, while we are yet an object in ourselves, or while our hearts are restless and cumbered; and it would seem as if Satan’s great aim at the present time was to introduce almost anything to the exclusion of Christ; things good and lawful in themselves, which have their own place and importance, are thrust by Satan in upon the minds of God’s people, if by any means Christ may be thereby excluded from the one sole exclusive position which is His, namely, the absorbing, commanding motive and object of the heart. Take service, for instance, the blessed privilege of the saint, yet where it is the motive or object, Christ is displaced. In the history before us, Martha was, we are told, cumbered, and the Lord told her she was careful and troubled about many things. As yet she had not learned to sit restful at His blessed feet; she was thinking with anxiety how best she could serve His body. Mary sat at His feet, in repose and quietness—heard His word—thus meeting His heart and thoughts; her heart is at rest, her eye is turned towards Him, and her ear is opened to His voice. She is absorbed; He is her one object, she has but one thought. Oh, how blessed it is when this discovery is made—He has eclipsed and distanced all else.
And, observe, the order here is important, she sat and she heard; there is no place for the word of Christ in the ear, no liberty to hear, unless the heart is silent. There is a remarkable instance of this in Col. 3, “Let the peace of Christ [not God] rule in your hearts,” &c. Then follows, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” Observe, the word of Christ dwells, where the peace of Christ rules; this latter decides all questions, is the umpire or tribunal under which the heart rests. But let me here guard against any misunderstanding: I have occasionally heard saints speak as if they were the antitype of Martha, because they were engrossed with their own concerns or cares; their businesses or their family commanding their entire thoughts, they excuse themselves by bringing Martha, the sister of Mary, down to their own level Now this is entirely a mistake; it was no selfish, personal interest with which Martha’s mind was occupied; she received Jesus into her house, and she busied herself in order to serve Him; but herein consisted the great difference between her and Mary, the latter served Christ according to His thoughts while Martha sought to render Him service according to her own thoughts. Mary consulted His heart, while Martha consulted her own, and hence the difference in the service. And is not this to be found largely among the saints at the present moment? How few there are who get near enough to the heart of Christ to know what would suit Him, and then to give Him according to all the thus discovered desires of His heart. This was Mary’s better blessed part in this her first position, she sat and she heard; she was all repose, all ear, all eye for Christ. May the Lord grant His beloved people to know it more abundantly in these last restless days.
The next occasion finds her at His feet as a mourner (John 11). The bright day and dark day in her history, if I may so speak, serve to bring out the resource which He is to her. Lazarus, whom Jesus loved as well as Mary, has sickened and died; the desolations of the wilderness, the sorrows of the way, are to be known. There is but one place where the sun goes not down at noon. A three days’ journey and no water found, and then what is discovered, bitter, taught Israel what sort of a place the wilderness was; and the tree cut down to sweeten the bitter waters, unfolded to them God’s interest and care, if they only would learn it. We know how Israel carried themselves at Marah (Ex. 15). Let us see Mary there in John 11, and first notice how such a Marah does not break her rest: “Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him, but Mary sat still in her house.” She who sat at His feet and heard His word, will not move without His word, but as soon as this message reaches her, “The Master is come, and calleth for thee,” then we read, “As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him.” She tarries for His word, His call, even in her deep, deep sorrow; but as soon as she has His word, she is as fleet of step to reach Him, as she was slow to move before. O! how blessed this is, dear reader, to wait thus for the Lord and trust in His word. But this is not all, for as soon as she reaches Him, she casts herself down at His feet—a well-known spot to her—with the simple confession of the glory of His person on her lips, “Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not died.” Now, mark what a contrast to all this is found in Martha; restless as she was when she heard that Jesus was coming she went to meet Him, with her heart charged with thoughts of the relief which she might get from Him. “I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.” There is no time in which the unsubdued restlessness of our heart manifests itself more than the day of sorrow and bereavement. Relief is the highest and best thought we have in such a day, if we are unrestful; and hence you find it marked in Martha. But not so Mary; she finds her solace, comfort, and resource in Him, at whose blessed feet she cast herself: and He who spake to her and walked with her in this the day of her sorrow and anguish, is now actually Himself filling the blank in her heart.
And let no one think or say this is insensibility; superiority to that which presses upon your heart, is surely not to be insensible to it; but it is one thing to have sorrow rolling over you like a great wave, above which your head is never lifted, it is another thing to find in Christ that which sustains and uplifts the soul in the darkest day, when death has spread its sable mantle over all the heart could prize. I feel convinced that God intended us to feel the sorrow, and I am persuaded that the deepest acquaintance with Christ, and what He is in such an hour, is in nowise inconsistent with keen feeling.
“Many long years ago I was wounded with a wound, which has been green ever since. The Lord be praised for that blow! Through eternity it will proclaim His love to me”! Such is the language of one who has learned what it is to be solitary, and yet superior to it all in Christ. The wound may be green, while the heart finds its resource in Him who was dead and is alive again for evermore.
I have said relief was the foremost thought in Martha’s mind: “I know that whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.” Who cannot see to what this pointed? It was the cry of the heart for relief. Is it amiss to look for such? Does God never give it?
Ah, reader, let me tell you what you will find to be real blessing: it is a resource known ere relief comes that gladdens the heart of Christ; the relief in His service, and He does serve us, blessed be His name. The resource is Himself. Herein lay the wide difference between Mary and Martha in John 11: the former found Him her resource, when death desolated her heart and her home; the latter looked to Him as the servant of her need. He would lead her higher, even to set before her heart Himself who was the resurrection and the life, but she was not up to this; and hence, I feel sure, when “she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come and calleth for thee,” it was the testimony of her own conscience, that she could not meet Christ, but that Mary could. The Lord was above Martha; in one sense, indeed, He was above and beyond them both, for they both in their turn speak of death, but life is His great theme. He had life in Him and before Him; and as another has blessedly expressed it, “The empty sepulcher displayed and celebrated it (John 20); the risen Christ imparted it” (John 20). But, to return, how blessed it is to see the Lord Jesus, keeping the truth of Himself as a resource before them both in such an hour, and to Mary He does not speak a word about His intention to raise up Lazarus, though He was on the road to do so at that time; and why? He is her resource, and fills the blank in her heart at that moment; and this she has ere relief comes. Is the relief less sweet when it comes, because He, whose service it is to us, is first known as the resource of the heart?
May the Lord give each of us to know this better as we pass through a desert land, the valley of the shadow of death. Let us turn now and look at Mary “at his feet,” on another occasion, for which those we have considered prepared her. In John 12 we find her there again; but how different from the two former or previous occasions. He was the contributor in these, she in this! She expresses Him as she had learned and known Him. It was a peculiar moment; death seems to have been in all their thoughts; the chief priests, in the hatred of their hearts, would seek to put to death the man who, alive among men, was the living exponent of Him who is the resurrection and the life. The Lord Jesus Himself thinks of death, that death by which He was about to glorify God and put away sin; and never did it come more forcibly before Him than when a picture of the kingdom presents itself. Israel for the time owning Him, and the Greeks wanting to see Him: then it was that those blessed words dropped fatness from His lips, “Except a corn of wheat fail into the ground and die, it abideth alone.” But there was one beside whose thoughts were filled with death at that moment, and so we read, “then took Mary,” &c. The action here recorded and commended of the Holy Ghost, was the fruit of acquaintance with the heart of Christ. She made His heart and His desires her study, not her own. This is the great secret of true and approved devotedness. Many are tendering Christ service, which is all very well in itself, but dates its origin no further back than their own wishes and desires. Mary’s thoughts were formed by communion with Himself; and found their fitting expression at this moment, and how much they met the desires of His heart, these words tell, “She hath wrought a good work on me” (Mark 14:6). There was but One who commanded Mary’s affections at this moment, and there was but One who understood her; misapprehended and blamed for what was but waste in their eyes, Jesus vindicates her. O! how blessed to hear Him say, “Why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me.”
Their greatest, loftiest thought, was to be a benefactor of man—it were waste to anoint the body of Jesus—the expression of communion with His thoughts, as well as the Father’s thoughts about Him—but to bestow it upon the poor, to benefit man, what could be more praiseworthy, or desirable?
Again her action here told her estimate of all, even the very best, when He was going to die. Her world she will bury with Him. If He dies, all that could any longer detain her heart here is dead, too. Alas, how little we who have Christ alive in glory, know what it is to find our all there where Christ is. Not only not having it here, where Christ was, but is not, like Mary, but having it there in glory where Christ is, with whom the Holy Ghost has united us, and given us the consciousness of that union in our souls.
May we learn the blessedness of having to do with Christ, and as we know Him, to be the expression of Him in this poor world, until He come forth to receive us to Himself; that where He is, there we may be also.
The Peculiarity of Our Calling
A great principle of God, which runs through all dispensations and times, is the very distinct way in which the eye and hope of the saint is transferred from all here to what is in God Himself as soon as a condition of things presents itself in this world with which God cannot connect Himself. Of course it will be found more distinct and marked in a moment like the present than in any preceding time.
I shall refer to three instances in this principle in the OT, then with one in the New.
The first in the OT is to be found in Gen. 11, 12. Ch. 11 details the history of the building of the tower of Babel, and the consequent scattering of the nations. In the plain of Shinar man set up a would-be independency: God is either refused or unrecognized in His own creation: man’s best and highest thought was to enrich and ennoble man—“let us make us a name.” The name of Babel marks man’s boasted independence, as well as the judgment which fell upon it, “because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.” Now it is connected with this that ch. 12 gives us the call of Abraham; and Stephen, in Acts 7, tells us it was the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham. And here I would seek to press the fact that this call of Abraham was not only away from what was unsuited to the blessed God; it was this, but much more; it was a call into a path and testimony positive in itself; and not only becoming the person so called, but suited to the blessed God amid a scene of wilfulness and independency of man; even as the apostle tells us in Heb. 11, “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.” It is important to mark the expression, he went out and he sojourned. What else, may I ask, was becoming one who was looking for a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God? The maintenance of this distinct and new calling is incumbent on one in a scene marked by Babel; and it is important to note how Abraham, when for a moment he surrenders it, as it were, and in a famine seeks help from Egypt, is obliged to retrace his steps to the very place which marked his call, namely, Bethel, where his altar was at the first. He builds no altar in Egypt, but when he retraces his path and reaches Bethel, there Abraham called on the name of the Lord.
There is another truth of the very first moment connected with this; it is as Abraham maintains his call that he is preserved from the entanglements by which Lot is ensnared; and not this only, but it gives him the position of deliverer of Lot himself. And here let me press, that now the surest way to be superior to the entanglements and enticements of a scene like this, is to maintain the distinctness and peculiarity of our position as heavenly men walking through it. It is only as a people who are connected with Christ outside of it, that we are empowered and qualified to walk apart from it, as well as because ourselves delivered, we are able to deliver others.
I turn now to another illustration of the principle I have enunciated, in 2 Kings 2. It was a dark moment in Israel’s history; Baalzebub, the god of Ekron is sought after by Ahaziah, as if there were no God in Israel. Elijah’s rapture is to precede the mission of Elisha, but ere the course of the one is closed, and that of the other is opened, there is to be a distinct break with all that which was associated with the Lord’s name and power in Israel. Gilgal, Bethel, Jericho, Jordan, were spots that could not fail to wake up reminiscences of better days in Israel.
Gilgal was the place of separation to God, but long ere this, Bochim had taken its place.
Bethel, the place of Abraham’s altar, of Jacob’s altar, had ere this become the scene of Jeroboam’s calf; the witness of the people’s apostasy from Jehovah.
Jericho, the scene of their first conquest and victory, then destroyed, had been, ere this, re-built.
Jordan, representing resurrection-victory, and crossing which they had passed from the wilderness to the land, is now crossed in a reverse order, putting Elijah and Elisha on the wilderness side of Jordan.
How solemn in connection with all this the words of the prophet: “But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba, for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought” (Amos 5:5).
Now it is important to observe, that it is outside this condition of things Elisha is called in his day, ere he is sent back into it as a witness and servant of Jehovah; and therefore it was at the other side of Jordan, when they had crossed over, that Elisha sees Elijah’s rapture, sees him taken away, receives a double portion of his spirit, and Elijah’s mantle. Another order of things has opened upon him, another scene has, as, it were, dawned upon his eyes: he is now empowered, qualified, equipped to return to a people who have forsaken Jehovah for Baalzebub, to a scene where the water is nought, and the ground barren. Let me here ask upon whom first does the effect of his power tell itself? Of course upon himself. He rends his own mantle, and sets his face for Jordan; and then, returning to a blasted, blighted place, he becomes, in the power of the thought of what he has received, a contributor to it, diffusing healing and blessing around. What a picture of what the saint now ought to be, one who is in the resources that are in Christ the triumphant One—one who has seen Him taken away, as it were; and more than all this, what you do not find in the picture here, one who is united by the Holy Ghost to Christ where He is—a part of Christ. Wondrous thought! Alas, how little we seem to have any divine sense of what we are in Christ, and the peculiarity and distinctiveness of our path and testimony as such, in a world which has not only refused and rejected, but also crucified and slain our Lord; and because we have such feeble sense at best of what we are, we are correspondingly short in our apprehensions of the wondrous resources and power which is ours in Christ, to walk through this world for Him.
I turn now to Ex. 33, where we shall find another illustration of the same principle. Then also it was a cloudy and dark day in Israel; the people have made a calf in Horeb, and worshiped a molten image; they have changed their glory for the similitude of an ox that eateth grass, and have forgotten God their Savior, which had done great things in Egypt. What a cry that is which is heard now in Horeb, “These be thy gods, O Israel, that brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” What will Moses do? The people of God’s election, salvation, preservation, have turned aside from Jehovah. Where can the eye of God rest in a scene like that? and where can Moses turn for solace and repose? Moses will be no exception to God’s principle, of which we speak. If Abraham is called out by the God of glory to be a stranger and witness for God in a day characterized by Babel; if Elisha is the companion and witness of the rapture of Elijah in a day characterized by Baalzebub; so in the day of Israel’s calf and Israel’s captain—for they said at another time, “Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt” (Num. 14:4). Moses, in separating from the guilty camp, says to God, “I beseech thee show me thy glory.”
The scene of his hopes and expectations is transferred, and “thy glory” becomes the object and desire of his heart. What else could meet Moses in an hour like this? Where will his eye turn, and where will his heart rest? He says, as it were, I have seen enough of man to turn away from him for ever; “I have seen an end of all perfection,” “I beseech thee, show me thy glory.”
I turn now to the scripture in the New Testament, Acts 7. What do I find here? the same principle, only intensified and extended to the fullest. Why do I say so? Because now the Son of God has been actually cast out and put to death. It is this two-fold blot, if I may so say, upon the page of man’s history, that determines the saints’ singularity and peculiarity at this present time. Christ has been rejected out of the world, and the Holy Ghost, the witness and evidence of the world’s guilt, is dishonored and denied in the world and by the world. Where will Stephen, the witness and servant, turn his eye in a moment like this, and surrounded as he is by the most terrible circumstances? Now, mark it well, for nothing could be more distinct or unique. Previous to this the lingering love of God could thus express itself: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you to heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” Directing, it was in fact, pointing the eye down to earth, and finding for them there even yet, faint though it be, a hope; but is it so now? how changed! “But he [Stephen], being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God.” O, what a sight! It is not now heaven opening on any object here: there was once one, and only one, object upon whom it did open to Stephen; the Holy Ghost directs the eye, and shows the object there; “he saw the glory of God and Jesus.” What a contrast this to the revelation to Moses in Ex. 33. To him God said, Thou canst not see my face; I will cover thee with my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts. But now there is nothing of this; it is the full unveiled glory, and Jesus in it, that meets the eye of Stephen; the first man has been put out in judgment, the second Man has gone up into glory, and nothing is there now to hinder the eye of the saint and servant from gazing with unveiled face on that blessed One where He is; and not this only, but now to find its home and its rest where Christ is. And here let me press what an immense difference it makes in the path and history of saints, as to whether they are looking for heaven to open upon them, or gazing up steadfastly into that heaven which is open to them. Alas! how little fixedness of purpose, how little vigor of soul, as implied in that word steadfastly; and, consequently, so little of what appears so marked in Stephen’s case, and so little of power to persevere. Though surrounded by the most terrible circumstances, suffering at the hands of the very chief of his nation, he can kneel down in all the quietness of confidence and repose and spend the moments that are left in praying for those from whom he is receiving all this appalling hate, and commit his spirit to the One whom they had cast out and crucified. Such, then, is the path of the saint and servant of God. The Holy Ghost is as true today as He was then in keeping the eye directed to Christ where He is, in order that the saint may be for Christ where He is not; as true in maintaining the Saint in practical association with Christ in glory. To sum up, then, the saints’, singularity now consists in—
1. Being united by the Holy Ghost to Christ in heaven.
2. Being maintained by the Holy Ghost on earth, in such practical association with Christ, that the eye is turned away from earth to heaven.
3. As a consequence of the former, reproducing Christ down here: being like Christ where He is not; a messenger from heaven, walking in the power of divine resources and heavenly springs, above everything and apart from everything; a light amid surrounding darkness, shining all the brighter because of the darkness; able to help everybody, succor everybody, support everybody.
Does anyone allow for a moment that I am propounding impossibilities? To such an one let me say, If in the One who has gone up above every one and everything, all fulness dwells, and if in the saint here, weak and feeble though he be, the Holy Ghost dwells, is there any limit as to capacity and power for enjoyment personally of Christ where He is, or for distinctness, singularity, and boldness of walk and testimony for Him where He is not?
“We all, with unveiled face beholding the Lord in glory, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).
“Lukewarm, and Neither Cold nor Hot”
That we are passing through times full of moment, it were vain to deny; and to assert that this day is not one of sorrow and sadness to any heart that is true to Christ, and enters ever so feebly into that which now interests Him on earth, were insensibility to His sorrow. The key to our present position is His rejection. It is impossible to be in the path with Christ if this be not apprehended; and if it be, there is no truth more practical or solemn. Reader, pause and ponder this one fact—all eternity will not supply this little moment—this hour of Christ’s rejection. But let me be no way understood to imply that external causes work together for our grief and perplexity at this juncture: doubtless it may be so to a very great extent, but I apprehend the real grief comes from within rather than from without. What more sad than the Lord’s professed servants failing in personal whole-hearted devotedness to Himself?—failing in loyalty to Him?—failing in apprehension of what is due to Him? Ah, reader, the saints, rather than the world, make the path at this time one of sorrow and grief. They will not walk this road with you; and if you walk it and leave them, they count you an enemy, and they even hold you up to the gaze of the unconverted world outside– having first branded you as an extreme person. Those who so act are saints—members of the body of Christ—loved by Him; yet sadly Laodicean in character, neither cold nor hot—lukewarm. If for a moment the far deeper sorrow of which I have written permits us to look outside, what do we find? We find hostile associations, most assuredly contemplated in scripture, mustering their forces with energy and vigor. We find men’s wills running. How surely we can see that Satan is master of the field—that the devil has the day. And we see almost everywhere, deserters—men “building again the things which they destroyed,” abandoning (at least apparently) a position never truly taken up—principles never in reality adopted. And alongside all this we have a loud, pretentious, showy profession of attachment to the saints, which has no existence, save in the imaginations of those who are deceived, and who seem never to have thought over this word—“By this we know we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments”; and “He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.” It remained for the last days, our day, to caricature the love which most surely is of God. You will find now it consists, in most minds at least, in a selfishness that seeketh her own, along with unfaithfulness that barters God’s glory and the interests of Christ and the church for what is called peace, union and harmony. It is an evident wile of Satan, and an attempt to render truth practically of no value, and as I have already said, to grossly pervert the word of the Lord Jesus, “Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.”
Nothing is more remarkable in this day than the striking contrast between the phraseology and the practical position and walk of saints. There is much of “in word and in tongue” very little of “in deed and in truth.” What a solemn picture is presented before you when you place profession and practice side by side! Doubtless the tendency of the day is to adopt an advanced form of expression of the truth, but to walk as worldly as ever. There never was a time when unknown, and unfelt truth was more traded upon than now; for instance, you will hear such solemn subjects as death and resurrection, discipleship and the coming of the Lord, all maintained, as the saying is, and preached, even by those whose course is unaffected by them. The solemn sin of the day is, that men are not formed by that which comes so smoothly from their tongues; they are therefore eloquent in condemning themselves—“they say, and do not.” Alas, alas! for the want of conscience and reality among the professed followers of a rejected Lord.
There are no doubt saints who, from their earliest infancy, have been fondled in the arms of systems which are nothing but a kind of repairing of the flesh, if not a cultivation of it; the object of all such being the best way to get on in this scene. We can see a melancholy consistency at least between their principles and practice; but the heart sickens to hear men talk of death and resurrection, the coming of the Lord, and so forth, who are keenly alive to the interest of earth, who speculate in the great money-grasping projects of the day, who are deepening their interests in the world, enlarging their borders—in one word, ministering to the first Adam.
I say, reader, the heart is saddened by such sights. One is reminded of the cause of it by that solemn word (2 Tim. 3:8), “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth.” I need not say that it was by imitation the truth was resisted in the day of Moses; and even so is it now. It is Satan’s policy at this time, and he knows well the power of it. By this means he attempts not only to bring into contempt the truth itself; but to cast a slight on real life testimony to its power; and here it may not be out of place to say that in this consists the real difficulty of souls at the present time. It is their condition that tells on their position. I do not for a moment mean to deny the fact that a soul may be in the right place or position, that is, Christ’s place for every soul now on earth, and yet very seriously wanting in condition; but I do assert most decidedly, and observation and experience bear testimony with me, that the difficulties of saints at the present day about their position, arise, for the most part, from the condition or state of soul they are in at the time. For instance, how can we expect a saint who is ministering to self to have any conception of what is due to Christ—what His present mind is about the members of His body on earth? The more I read my Bible, the more I see this, that there is a state of soul which is capable of entering into God’s mind and thoughts, and not only that, but a state or condition to which God will communicate His mind; as well as the contrary, namely, that there is a condition incapable of grasping the mind of God, and to which He does not communicate His thoughts. What means such a solemn word as Lev. 10:8-10: “And the Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die; it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations; and that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean.”
Does it not speak a solemn word to us now? and does it not tell us the secret of manifold incapacity to grasp God’s mind and discern His path? Most surely it does. The Lord give us to ponder its weighty, solemn, soul-searching exhortation. Has the world nothing to say to the course and difficulties of saints at the present time? As far as my observation goes, I find that, without an exception almost, it is either those who wish to go back again into the world, or else those who have never been out of it and wish to remain in it that are unable to see what is suited to God and what is not, and lower the standard of divine purity and holiness down to the level of man’s miserable condition.
Has self-will nothing to say to the present perplexities of saints? You will hear them talk about their liberty, and the like. It really means liberty for self. If it were liberty of the Holy Ghost, another order of things would manifest it; but it is self-seeking and self-maintenance that is contended for. Now, that I may return from somewhat of a digression, though a needful one, let me say that the truth of God about which I have been writing is not what so many take it to be, namely, a divine creed, claiming subscription; no, what I write about is not a matter of subscription, experience, or attainments, but a solemn reality, a real condition, into which every soul that simply rests on redemption is brought. When the Lord Jesus went down into the judgment, He not only settled the question of my sins, but he terminated the history of man in the flesh before God. It was, in a word, the winding up of the history of the first Adam. Every link, therefore, with the old creation has been broken by His death, and if I have to do with Him, it must be outside this scene. Now again let me repeat, this is a fact; and it is intended to command me to form me. My state or condition determines my path. Is it true that the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, was the judgment upon the first man? If so, then the first man is gone in judgment, and I stand in a new order of things, I am linked up in life by the Holy Ghost with the very One who went down and bore the judgment, and is risen out of it. To faith, then, the first Adam is gone in judgment, and a new order of things has taken its place. I again repeat, this is not attainment or feeling, it is fact; apprehended by faith; and the whole course of a Christian ought to be from this, and not towards it—that is, I am to walk down here in the non-recognition of myself; because I am now contented with Christ in the glory by the Holy Ghost, my old man having been judged and set aside in His cross. The Lord graciously set this so clear before the eye of the soul, that the power and joy of it may fill every heart.
Again, another subject which is traded upon at the present time is the Lord’s second coming. It need not be remarked here how much more widespread this truth has been of late, compared with former years. You will find many now who tell you, to show how orthodox they are, they hold the second advent (as they coldly term it), but their condition tells how easy it is merely to profess truth in these times. It is not truth in power, it is not truth learned from God. We lay it down as indisputable, that this hope can never be a present living hope before any heart that does not now feel the absence of Christ.
And oh, reader, how little His absence is felt by Christians; how feebly have His own blessed words seized our affections! “For their sakes I sanctify myself”; that is, as if He said, “I go apart from this scene that I may detach you from it.” It would be impossible to enter into this and be worldly: it would be impossible to be in the truth of Christ’s absence from this scene and be worldly. How little, how feebly apprehended, or felt, His absence! Could the heart that was true to Him, and knew Himself as the one alone satisfying object, rest in anything in a scene where He was rejected, and out of which He has gone? Impossible! Where is that loyalty of heart to Christ which refuses a place where He was scorned and disowned?
Mark, it is not for a moment questioned that souls have got benefit from Christ: but this makes it all the more sad, that He should be known and used as the servant of necessity merely, and not for what He is in Himself.
I do now feel it more and more each day, that there has been so little presenting of Christ, that souls have lost the sense of the person, in the overwhelming importance which has been attached to the benefit derived from Him: in one word, modern evangelization consists in preaching salvation and not Christ. The necessary consequence is, feebleness in the heart and affections as to the person; low thoughts, if any at all, of what is due to Him; souls have got this—saved for earth, instead of connected with heaven.
It is yet more grievous to the heart to find how little reciprocated Christ’s affections have been or are. When on the very eve of His departure, He spoke the precious words of John 14, He said one word, the only one, too, that would comfort a heart true in its love to Him—“I will come again.” He counted on this at least, that nothing short of His presence—Himself—could fill in our hearts the blank His absence would create. As has been blessedly remarked by another, there are two “comes” in John 14, “I will come to you,” and “I will come for you.” The presence of the Holy Ghost is the accomplishment of the first, and the coming of the Lord Jesus, as in 1 Thess. 4, will be the accomplishment of the other. And this I will say, the second, that is His coming for me, is feeble before my soul if I am not in the truth of the first, namely, that He has come to me in the person of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. I never yet knew a soul in the apprehension and freshness of the first that was not fresh in the hope of the second. But, reader, how many other objects have taken Christ’s place in the hearts of His saved people? Self-aggrandizement, money-making, earthly position, a worldly spirit, have all vied with each other, and succeeded to the exclusion, practically, of Christ Himself. His absence from this scene is not felt, and consequently His coming again is but a poor, cold doctrine, not a living reality in the heart. When you turn to the early history of the church, what a contrast. To the Thessalonians Paul writes, “Ye became followers of us and of the Lord”; “Ye were ensamples to all that believe”; “From you sounded out the word of the Lord”; “Your faith to Godward is spread abroad, so that we need not to speak anything”; “Ye turned to God . . . to serve the living and true God; and to wait for His Son from heaven” (1 Thess.1). What a picture this—what a contrast with the present! And then, again, we know that so full and present and immediate was the hope of the Lord’s coming for them, before the hearts of these Thessalonian saints, that the apostle writes (ch. 4) to comfort hearts that were cast down because death, rather than the coming of the Lord, took away their loved ones. What a contrast with the present time!
Saints lay their dead in the grave and mourn their absence, not because the Lord has not come, but because ties to earth are broken thereby, which time too often heals; new links with the world are formed, and it becomes as bright before the heart as ever. The absence of Christ is forgotten, and the blank created by His absence is filled up by other objects. O for more of that simplicity and those unworldly ways which bespeak a sense of the absence of Christ, and is suited to those who announce every Lord’s day at the Table that death by which not only sin is put away, but every link with this world is broken. I have written, reader, that which has deeply exercised my own heart; and I would say, in conclusion, that the remedy is simple for all this failure and sorrow. What is wanted in souls is a more whole-hearted surrender of everything to Christ, an appreciation for, and love to Him beyond all else—not only to strip ourselves for Christ, but to surrender ourselves to Him—to hold fast His word and not to deny His name.
The Lord preserve His people in these days from Laodiceanism. How blessed when the one object that fills the heart and occupies the soul and commands the affections is Jesus. Like Mephibosheth while David is away, nothing can fill in his heart the blank that David’s absence creates, and therefore he deports himself in a manner that is consistent with real sorrow, and sense of loss; but when David returns, he and he alone fills the blank in Mephibosheth’s heart—his affections have now an object to go out after. “Thou and Ziba divide the land” take all, for as much as my lord the king is come again in peace unto his own house.” He wants no more, but he can do with no less. As we have said, one object satisfies his heart, and commands his affections.
The Lord give His beloved people, in these last times, to be more whole hearted, uncompromising, and devoted to His blessed Son Jesus Christ our Lord—Amen.
“O patient, spotless One!
Our hearts in meekness train,
To bear Thy yoke, and learn of Thee,
That we may rest obtain.
Jesus! thou art enough
The mind and heart to fill;
Thy life—to calm the anxious soul;
Thy love its fear dispel.
O fix our earnest gaze,
So wholly, Lord, on Thee,
That with Thy beauty occupied,
We elsewhere none may see.”
From Practical Truths, London: Morrish, n.d.