Rest for the Weary

The Book of Ruth is one of the many beautiful and touching narratives of Holy Scripture. Within it lies the history of a nation, the history of a family, the history of a soul. The story of how Ruth the Moabitess, a poor Gentile, came into blessing through and with that wonderful character, Boaz, "the mighty man of wealth," sweetly illustrates the precious gospel story how a poor sinner may find rest and peace in Christ, the true Kinsman and Redeemer.

The author of this book, W. T. P. Wolston, M.D. (1840-1917) was saved as a young man and much devoted to the spread of the gospel of the grace of God. It is said that for many years he preached the gospel somewhere every day.

Many books and tracts came from W.T.P.W.'s pen. They have been much used in presenting the gospel simply and clearly so that anxious souls have found peace in reading them, and the careless have been awakened to their need of Christ. Young Christians find much help from them in presenting the gospel to others. His ministry still rejoices the souls of many believers today.

This edition is largely a reprint of the original from which a smaller article has been deleted and another, taken from A STUDENT STORY by the same author, has been added. In sending it forth it is with the desire that God may graciously use it for blessing still, both to the unsaved and to His own beloved people.

“Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons. And the name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion Ephrathites of Bethlehem-judah. And they came into the country of Moab, and continued there. And Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died; and she was left, and her two sons. And they took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth: and they dwelled there about ten years. And Mahlon and Chilion died also both of them; and the woman was left of her two sons and her husband. Then she arose with her daughters in law, that she might return from the country of Moab; for she had heard in the country of Moab how that the Lord had visited his people in giving them bread. Wherefore she went forth out of the place where she was, and her two daughters in law with her; and they went on the way to return unto the land of Judah. And Naomi said unto her two daughters in law, Go, return each to her mother’s house: the Lord deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead, and with me. The Lord grant you that ye may find rest. each of you in the house of her husband. Then she kissed them; and they lifted up their voice, and wept. And they said unto her, Surely we will return with thee unto thy people. And Naomi said, Turn again, my daughters: why will ye go with me? Are there yet any more sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands? Turn again, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have an husband. If I should say I have hope, if I should have an husband also tonight, and should also bear sons: would ye tarry for them till they were grown? Would ye stay for them from having husbands? Nay, my daughters; for it grieveth me much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord is gone out against me. And they lifted up their voice, and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother in law, but Ruth clave unto her. And she said, Behold, thy sister in law is gone back unto her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister in law. And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me. When she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go with her, then she left speaking unto her. So they two went until they came to Bethlehem. And it came to pass when they were come to Bethlehem, that all the city was moved about them, and they said, Is this Naomi? And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty; why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty had afflicted me? So Naomi returned, and Ruth, the Moabitess, her daughter in law, with her, which returned out of the country of Moab; and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest” (Ruth 1).

There are three characters, beloved reader, in this chapter, which bring before us and illustrate three entirely distinct states of soul. In Naomi you have the sad and solemn case of a backslider; in Orpah you have the fearful condition of a soul that prefers the world to Christ; and in Ruth you have the beautiful picture of a soul that prefers Christ to everything. You can easily tell, my friend, which of these three characters is yours. Are you a backslider? Are you one who prefers the world to Christ? or are you one who prefers Christ to anything and everything? Do not say you do not know; that is not true. You do know. When I was in the world I knew quite well that I preferred the world, and that in my heart there was nothing but enmity to God’s beloved Son.

In the Old Testament Scriptures, as well as in the New, you have the truth unfolded that God loves us, and wants us to know and love Himself. Men do not believe it, but there it is. Look at Naomi, she is the picture of one who has known the love of God, and turned her back upon Him for something in the world. Is such an one reading this paper?—one who has known the love of God, walked for a while with the Lord, confessing His name, seemed for a time really true-hearted to Him, enjoyed the sweetness of His presence, and then something has come in—something perhaps in your worldly circumstances—and little by little, insensibly perhaps at first, your back has been turned on the Lord. At first the turning away was very slight, but it was turning from Him, and little by little, little by little, you got farther and farther off, till at last the soul woke up to find it was utterly empty.

Everything is bitter in the soul that has given up Christ for the world. “Call me not Naomi (that is, pleasant), call me Mara (that is., bitter),” says Naomi (vs. 20). Oh, reader, are you one that has got back into the world, and turned your back on the Lord? Fain would I have you turn right round to Him again this moment. Oh, wandering one, return, return! Backslider, the Father has missed thee from the family circle, the Savior has missed thee from His side, the Shepherd has missed thee from the flock; oh, return, return! Nothing has changed His heart towards you; spite of all your wanderings, He loves you still; He would have you back by His own blessed side. In this chapter I get him bringing back Naomi.

Ten years she and her family had been away from Judah; yet she ought never to have left Judah, the place where God was known. It was quite natural she should go when there was a famine there, you say. Yes, quite natural, for nature always turns its back upon God; but see the folly of it. Could not God have maintained them in Bethlehem? “Bethlehem” means “the house of bread”; and could not God have maintained them there in peace and plenty? But what does she get by leaving it? Does she get peace and plenty in Moab? No, the heart that leaves God for the world gets plenty of trouble, but not one scrap of peace; a soul that has slipped away from the Lord, and got back into the world, wakes up, sooner or later, to find itself in misery and wretchedness.

Naomi leaves Judah with her husband and her two sons; a little while, and the one she loves best in the world is taken from her side and laid in the cold tomb. Ah, the Lord knows how to touch a heart by a sorrow like that. He says, Child! I love you too much to let that pillar remain by your side on which you are leaning. I will take that pillar away that you may lean on Myself. And now Mahlon is sick and dies. (“Mahlon” means sick, and “Chilion” pining.) And Chilion too is “pining” and dies; and she is left alone. Here comes the epitome of her history. “The woman was left of her two sons and her husband” (vs. 5). Thank God He did not leave her! Thank God, though you leave Him, He does not leave you. Do you know what passing through grief, such as this scripture unfolds, means? He would draw your heart by it to Himself.

And now see how the grace of God draws the heart back to Himself. Naomi rises up to return; not alone because she had found Moab only a graveyard, but because in the moment of her deepest distress and sorrow, when everything was broken up in Moab, she heard that there was plenty in the land she had left. Fool that she was ever to leave it! She hears that the Lord had “visited his people in giving them bread.” Oh, how our Father loves to visit His people and give them bread! He may chasten His people when they need it, but the delight of His heart is to fill them with joy to overflowing. It was the grace of the Lord that drew her back.

What drew Peter, after his terrible denial of his Master? It was that look of love. Though all should deny Him, he would not. He had said he would go to prison and to death for Him, but never deny Him. Full of self-confidence, which is often the secret of backsliding, he says he will never deny Him; but he was sleeping when he ought to have been praying; he was cutting off the servant’s ear when he ought to have been quiet; he forsook Christ, and fled, when he should have been near Him; and though he went into the palace of the high priest afterward (it was John who took him in), he did not get there by clinging to Christ, and a little servant girl can make him afraid, and deny that he ever knew his blessed Lord.

“Thou also wast with Jesus,” she said.

“Woman, I know Him not,” replies Peter.

Then another said, “Thou art also of them.”

And Peter said, “Man, I am not.”

But soon a third urges, “Did I not see thee in the garden with him?”

And then Peter began to curse and to swear, saying, “I know not this man of whom ye speak.”

Terrible picture of our weakness, when away from God! Within earshot of Jesus he can turn round and deny that he ever knew Him. And Jesus heard it, and turned round and looked at him. “You do not know Me, Peter?” That was what that look said. “You do not know Me?”

What kind of a look do you think the Lord gave Peter? Was it a withering look of scorn and contempt? Did it say, “Miscreant, liar,” in its glance? He deserved that it should, but oh, no, it was a look of broken-hearted love, of love so tender and strong. A look that said, “I love you still, Peter: if you do not know me, I know I love you.” And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.

I do not wonder that he wept bitterly. The grace of the Heart that he had wounded broke him down; and then afterward we are told of the Lord’s meeting and restoring this backsliding one. He appeared to Simon after His resurrection. The fact is recorded, but did you ever wonder how He restored him? Did you ever wonder what passed between the Lord and Peter that day? He does not tell us. We only know the fact. The Lord does not tell out all that goes on between a soul and Himself. He not only restores Peter, but He brings him to judge the thing that led him away, and then He trusts him again. The backslider never gets right with God till he has it all out with Him. When you get back, and judge the point of departure, then He restoreth the soul. The Lord does what we never do. We say, “I could never trust so-and-so again, after what has passed.” The Lord shows out to all how He can trust Peter after He has made him judge himself.

On the shore of Galilee’s lake the Lord publicly restores Peter. First of all He says, “Lovest thou me more than these?” Not more than these fishes; but Peter had said that though all should deny Him, he would not. Peter, using a word which implies more than love in general, answers, “Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I have a special affection for Thee.”

A second time He asks him, and a second time Peter answers, “Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I have a special affection for Thee.”

And now a third time the Lord puts the question. Three times Peter had denied Him, three times He interrogates him; and this third time He uses Peter’s own word, “Hast thou a special affection for me?” and this time Peter flings back the door of his heart and says, Lord, look in. “Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I have a special affection for Thee.” No one else would think I love Thee, but Thou knowest; no one else could believe it possible but Thou. The Lord seems to say, “Now, Peter, you take care of what I love best. I will put into your care that which is dearest to Me. ‘Feed my lambs,’ ‘Shepherd My sheep,’ ‘Feed My sheep.’ I can trust you now that you distrust yourself.” That is how the Lord restores, and gives back confidence. May He thus restore you this moment, O wandering one!

Now turn and look at these two young people who say they will go up with Naomi. Naomi does get back to the land, but on the road see the mischief she does. Oh, backsliding one, if restored, beware how you again slip away from the Lord, lest you be the cause of everlasting ruin to some other soul or souls under your very roof. There is nothing so terrible as backsliding, nothing so disastrous as slipping away from the Lord!

Both these two young people had passed through the same sorrow, were in the same circumstances, under the same influences, and with the same testimony before them; for Naomi must have unfolded something of God to them, to make Ruth speak as she does afterward. Orpah thus had the same opportunities, the same privileges, the same advantages, as Ruth, and at first they turn their backs on the world together. These two seriously mean to leave it; and I doubt not, beloved unsaved soul, you too have had your moments of serious thought; you have had your moments of conviction, have you not? Have you never trembled as you heard the preacher reason of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come? You know you have. But have you decided for Christ? No doubt you have said, “It is better to be a Christian than not to be one.” Your sins have come up before you, and you have trembled as you thought you must some day have to do with God, and you have felt afraid of the judgment to come.

But perhaps you say, “I have had no convictions, no anxiety, no fear for the future, or thought about my soul and God.” Do you say that? Ah! then, my careless, Christless friend, there are days of hopeless sorrow before you; days of terrible conviction, days of fearful anxiety, days of agony, and remorse, and terror unspeakable; but where? In the place where hope never comes; when anxiety, and convictions, and sorrow and remorse come all too late. Oh, that you may be aroused, awakened, convicted now, my unsaved readers; now, while you have still time to decide for Christ!

It may be, with some of you, that deep sorrow has been known in your heart; death has knocked, not at your door, but at the door of one you deeply loved; and as that one has been taken from you you have felt, “How would it have been had I been called away like that?” Ah, what would it be if you died now?

Young man, what would the issue be if you died this moment in the state in which you are? Where would you spend your eternity—your long, your endless eternity?

Hoary old man, grown old in forgetfulness of God, grown gray in rejection of Christ, with all your sins still upon you, if God called you away at this very moment, where would you spend your eternity?

Young woman, so gay and thoughtless, thinking only of the world, caring only for pleasure, with no thought of Christ, unwashed, un-forgiven, if God were to cut you down now, as you read this, where would you go to spend this endless eternity that is before you? It is high time you were converted. Oh, turn round to Jesus, your sins shall all be forgiven; you shall taste the blessedness of knowing the Lord. It is better far to belong to Him, happier far to be numbered among “His own”; and could you have a moment better than the present to accept Him as your Savior? Could you have a more important moment than this moment, in which to decide for Christ? Impossible! He loves you and wants to save you. His name, Jesus (i.e. Jehovah, the Savior), may well invite your trust; but put it off, put it off till tomorrow, and what shall then be? God knows.

But a few days ago I was called to see one who had been the day before in life and health in six hours she was a corpse; and, friend, it may be so with you tomorrow, or even today, and what do you think it would be to die in your sins? Think! think! I warn you; be warned in time! Have you no care for your precious soul; no anxiety to flee from the wrath to come; no desire to be with God’s beloved Son by-and-by? Oh, would you not like to know that your sins can be forgiven? Would you not like to be found among the ransomed of the Lord, by-and-by? Would you not like that your voice should swell that chorus of praise to the One who died to save you? Would you not like to be there in that scene of life and glory? Oh, decide,

DECIDE NOW, DECIDE FOR CHRIST!

Truly, this world is a scene of sorrow and death. What had Naomi found Moab to be? A graveyard! And what is this world? A great graveyard! Sorrow and death everywhere. The hearse that you meet as you go into the street tells you of death. If you turn from it and go another way, what will presently meet your eye? A house with the blinds all drawn down. Oh, you say, death has been there too. A few steps farther and you meet one draped in deep mourning; death again has been taking away the loved one. You go to your home, and there the first thing you see is the black-edged letter waiting for you, telling once more the tale of sorrow, bereavement, and death; and a morning or two hence some one else may take up the newspaper, and there, the last upon the list, “died suddenly,” is your name.

Yes, this world is one vast graveyard, but what a relief it is to turn from it to the living God! I cannot tell you what it is to my heart to know that the One who loves me best can never die. The one I love best here is the one with whom my deepest sorrow is connected, for death may come in and take that one away from me. But I have One to love now who can never die. Ah! But you say He has died. Yes, and He died for me, that is the best of it; that is what wins the heart for Christ. He died for me, and now the heart may flow out to Christ unhinderedly, and never shall its tendrils be rudely broken. You may love Him deeply, tenderly, yea, with your whole heart; your deepest affections may go out to Him, and never shall they be crushed or disappointed, for you will have found One to love who can never die. You who have known sorrow, would you not like to know Him to comfort you in it? You who have known death taking your dearest, would you not like to know Him who is the Resurrection and the Life? You who want an object to live for, would you not like to know Christ? Is your heart empty? He will fill it, for Christ fills to overflowing. There is life for the dead, comfort for the sorrowing, bread for the hungry, everything in Jesus, and an object to last you all your days, One who can never die.

Perhaps you say, “I should like to be a Christian, it is better far to be a Christian, for the world has never really satisfied me yet.” No, and it never will, for the heart is too big to be filled with aught except Christ, but He fills it to overflowing. But you tell me, “Some Christians are not happy.” I will tell you why, they are like Naomi, backsliding ones. They want to have a bit of the world and a bit of Christ; to hold the world with one hand and Christ with the other.

No wonder they are not happy, they are not the right kind of Christians at all; they have too much of Christ to really enjoy the world, and too much of the world to fully enjoy Christ; now, do not they deserve to be miserable for their halfheartedness? I think so. Besides, look at the damage they do; what is the effect of their half-heartedness? Why, by-and-by they will say to some young person who wants to be out-and-out for Christ, “Well, you know, you must not go so far; if you are going to be as decided for Christ as that, you will have to give a great deal up; you had better not take such a stand.”

After this sort speaks Naomi, saying, “Go, return.” “Go back!” I have no words strong enough in condemnation of such behavior to inquiring souls. “Go back” where? Go back to hell? Go back to the lake of fire and brimstone? Go back to Moab and its gods, and to hell at the end? for that is the real meaning of it. And this is the advice of one who knew the living God. Get all you can in the world, and everlasting ruin at the end. Even the world holds Christians, who act in such a way, in contempt. Very deep and profound was the contempt I had for unreal Christians when I was in the world. I respected real Christians, though, alas, I hated them; but I despised half-hearted ones. Oh, beware of in any wise ceding the truth one bit; by so doing you lose everything and you gain nothing.

Yet Naomi’s words seem kind and plausible, “The Lord deal kindly” (vs. 8); “The Lord grant you that ye may find rest” (vs. 9). What mockery! Turn your back on. Him, and look for rest! What might they have answered her? “We had everything, and it has all been swept away by death. Our cup was full, but it has been dashed to the ground, and we are empty and desolate in the world; we want something living and abiding.” Just suited are such souls for God to come in, and fill, and comfort, and satisfy. And they seem in earnest, too, and say, “Surely we will return with thee.” They appear so interested, so engaged about it, like a heart almost decided for Christ. But Naomi says, “Turn again.” Oh, how could she? Turn from God! Turn back to the world; the world that had failed to satisfy them! Naomi was the very picture of some crooked, crotchety, cross-grained people, who have no expectation of other people being saved; it is as much as they know they are saved themselves.

I suspect, too, that Naomi had a bit of Scripture in her mind that day, that no Moabite should enter the congregation of the Lord, even to the tenth generation. (See Deut. 23:3-4.)

So now she brings out this—If you go with me, your worldly prospects will all be blighted (vss. 11-13); go back, and the Lord give you something in the world. Worldly prospects all ruined; I think I see Orpah’s face. I cannot stand that, she says; I never thought of that. This brings Orpah to the point, and now, dear reader, comes the point whether you really want Christ or not.

“But,” you say, “will my worldly prospects be blighted?” So it is often. The moment you are out-and-out for Christ, your old companions will slight you and leave you. Do you, therefore, say, It is up-hill work being a Christian? Yes, it is; but look at the top of the hill, look at the end of the path, it is all brightest glory, the fair scene of light, and joy, and blessing with Christ for evermore.

When this point is come to, there is decision; and then comes the line of demarcation. Hitherto, these two had been going on side by side to the same spot; and there may be two souls in one family, perhaps two sisters, whose hearts are moved—both think they would like to be Christians; but now decision is called for. Ah, I am not prepared for that, says one. I had not counted the cost, says Orpah; good-bye, Naomi, good-bye. I shall always feel kindly towards you, and I hope we shall meet again some day; but I cannot go with you at that cost; and she turns her back on God and on blessing. From that moment Ruth goes one way, and Orpah another; the one is decided for God, and the other is decided for the world; and they separate forever, each step now taken more widely sundering them from each other; sad finale to what seemed so hopeful a beginning.

Oh, but you say, the picture is so dark, so dreary. Shall I lose in this world? Very likely. Will my prospects in life be blighted? Very likely. Then it is so dark, I could not be a Christian. And you go back, you choose the world, you reject Christ.

Everything in the world looks fair and bright before you for a time, and you say it is most natural you should cleave to the world and turn away from God; most natural, but what is the end? A little while and the grass is cut down, and tomorrow—tomorrow it is cast into the oven, the solemn end of an unconverted soul. A bright prospect the world has, most surely! No real joy for time, and nothing but real sorrow for eternity. You turn your back on God and blessing, on Christ and His love, and presently you are cast off by God, forsaken by Him, and then you spend your eternity where hope and light and love never, never come, and you choose this, and call it a bright picture, do you? Nay, it is like the rich man in the gospel, who was hurled in one moment from the lap of luxury to the lake of fire! Your path ends in death now, and judgment forever.

Oh, I warn any one who is this moment just balancing the matter. Do you turn back? “I do.” Do you answer really, I do? You choose the world? “Yes.” You turn your back on the truth, then, and back into the world in affections you go? Against Christ? “Yes.” For the world? “Yes.” Back to her people and her gods goes Orpah, and you follow in her steps. Hear what Isaiah says of these gods, “gods that cannot save” (Isa. 45:20). What an awful picture of a soul that turns its back, deliberately, in cold blood, on God and His Son!

One of these two characters is yours. Either, like Orpah, you refuse Christ and you choose the world, or, like Ruth, you say now, I cannot go back; you tell me the road is rough; I care not, it is the end of the road my eye is upon. Ruth is the picture of a soul that says, I will have Jesus, come what may in between. There is something in Jesus that attracts my heart, and Him I must have. But it will be a rough road. I care not, I must have Him. There will be stones in the way. I know it. There are lions in the path. No matter, “I will go!” “Where thou lodgest, I will lodge.” Mark how she goes into details; let the road be ever so rough, the accommodation ever so bare, she has sat down and counted the cost. “Thy people shall be my people,” even though the Lord’s people be a despised people, “And thy God my God,” that is, the end before Ruth is God Himself.

To the heart that wants salvation, that wants eternal life, I say, What is it you covet? It is God Himself. What do you want to possess? It is God you want. In Isa. 45 we hear of gods that cannot save, and then God unfolds what He is, “a just God and a Savior.” How just? Because He will not pass over or make light of sin. How a Savior? He gave His own beloved Son to die on Calvary’s cross, the just for the unjust, to bring us to Himself. And now He is willing to save to the uttermost all that come unto Him through Jesus. “Look unto me and be ye saved,” is His word. If I tell you of my God, what is He? A loving, a gracious God, a saving God, a God who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up to die in order that He might spare you. A God who loves you, and who wants to save you.

Well, do you say “Thy God shall be my God”?

My heart delights to hear the words. What a God He is! a just God and a Savior. “Look unto Me, and be ye saved.” Does He say, Look unto Me, and feel saved? No, it is “be ye saved.” If it were feel saved, Satan would whisper, But you do not feel aright. It is “be ye saved.” Are you looking to the Lord? Then you are saved; the moment your heart says, Well, God is for me, He loves me, He bids me look and live; I do look. Then what does He say? “Be ye saved.”

It is a blessed thing when the heart says, Christ is mine, I respond to His grace, to His call; hence forward, I am His. I AM DECIDED FOR CHRIST.

“When she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go with her, she left speaking,” and so can I! If decision for Christ is the word you can say just this moment, my work is done. I trust you are not “a little bit inclined towards” (No, no!), but “steadfastly minded” for Christ.

They come back to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest, and in the next chapter we read of Ruth gleaning until the end of barley harvest, and wheat harvest; what does that mean? She came in for everything. Whenever the heart is decided for Christ, everything is yours. The Lord grant you to have your heart so fixed on Christ, so pledged to Christ from this hour, that you may know you are Christ’s, and Christ is yours, and all that He has is yours too. The God that gives life to the dead, speaks peace to the troubled soul, and comfort to the sorrowing one, gives life and hope and joy to every believer, and will take each such in a little while to be where He is, in scenes of eternal brightness and beauty. Oh! Who would not have such a God? And you must make your choice. Either you must drop this paper godless, or for God. You must decide either against the Lord or for Him. There is not a single person can lay aside this paper undecided. If it is not for Christ, it is against him. “He that is not with me is against me.” There is no middle ground. Is it among the foes, the adversaries of the Lord, your lot is henceforth to be cast, or numbered with His own—able, henceforth, to sing this hymn that my heart loves?

“My heart is fixed, eternal God, Fixed on Thee,
And my immortal choice is made, Christ for me.”

“And Naomi had a kinsman of her husband’s, a mighty man of wealth, of the family of Elimelech; and his name was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter. And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech. And, behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said unto the reapers, The Lord be with you. And they answered him, The Lord bless thee. Then said Boaz unto his servant that was set over the reapers, Whose damsel is this? And the servant that was set over the reapers answered, and said, It is the Moabitish damsel that came back with Naomi out of the country of Moab: And she said, I pray you, let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves: so she came, and hath continued even from the morning until now, that she tarried a little in the house. Then said Boaz unto Ruth, Hearest thou not, my daughter? Go not to glean in another field, neither go from hence, but abide here fast by my maidens: Let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap, and go thou after them: have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee? And when thou art athirst, go unto the vessels, and drink of that which the young men have drawn. Then she fell on her face and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger? And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been showed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust. Then she said, Let me find favor in thy sight, my lord; for that thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly unto thine handmaid, though I be not like unto one of thine handmaidens. And Boaz said unto her, At mealtime come thou hither, and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she sat beside the reapers: and he reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was sufficed, and left. And when she was risen up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not; And let fall also some of the handfuls on purpose for her, and leave them, that she may glean them, and rebuke her not. So she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had gleaned: and it was about an ephah of barley. And she took it up, and went into the city: and her mother in law saw what she had gleaned: and she brought forth, and gave to her that she had reserved after she was sufficed. And her mother in law said unto her, Where hast thou gleaned today? And where wroughtest thou? Blessed be he that did take knowledge of thee. And she showed her mother in law with whom she had wrought and said, The man’s name with whom I wrought today is Boaz. And Naomi said unto her daughter in law, Blessed be he of the Lord, who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said unto her, The man is near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen. And Ruth the Moabitess said, He said unto me also, Thou shalt keep fast by my young men, until they have ended all my harvest. And Naomi said unto Ruth her daughter in law, It is good, my daughter, that thou go out with his maidens, that they meet thee not in any other field. So she kept fast by the maidens of Boaz to glean unto the end of barley harvest and of wheat harvest; and dwelt with her mother in law” (Ruth 2).

This second chapter of Ruth is intimately connected with the first chapter, which tells us briefly that a man named Elimelech, with his wife Naomi, and two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, under pressure of circumstances, left the land of Judah—left Bethlehem (the house of bread), and went down to Moab (the land of idolatry); turned their back on God and went into the world. A little while and Elimelech dies in Moab; a little longer and Mahlon is sick and dies, and then Chilion pines and dies likewise. Her husband and her two sons are taken away and Naomi is left alone. She wakes up to find her husband gone, both her sons gone, and she is left, the abject picture of desolation and sorrow.

Then she learns that the Lord has visited His people with bread, she hears of the grace of the Lord, and she sets out to return to Judah. Orpah and Ruth, her two daughters in law, say they will leave the land of idolatry and death and go up with her to Canaan. Canaan typifies heaven, and every sinner says he would like to go to heaven. They both make the start, and then you get Naomi, in effect, saying, “If you go with me, your worldly prospects will be ruined, go back to the world.”

Though they both say they will go with her, yet Orpah, true to her name, when she hears what Naomi says, turns back, frightened at the prospect. Orpah means “a fawn,” and a fawn is a timid, easily frightened creature. How many Orpahs there are now! How many who turn back frightened, afraid of the roughness of the road; terrified at the difficulties! Orpah turns back to the world—to Moab, “unto her people and her gods,” i.e., to her relations and her religion—and what kind of religion was it? Empty forms. A dull, Christless religion, with nothing in it for the heart. She is the type of a worldly professor. She goes back, and this brings Ruth to the front.

“Do not ask me to go back,” she says, “I will go on.” But the way is rough. “Never mind, I will go.” But you will lose everything. “It is no matter, I will go on, I must go on. I have had enough of Moab. I lost my husband in Moab, the one I loved best I lost; the world has only been a scene of sorrow, desolation, and death to me. Is there not a place of light, and joy, and incorruptibility that you can tell me of, and that I may reach? Thy people shall be my people; I will go with you.” And now comes the spring of it all, “Thy God shall be my God.”

Can you say that, beloved friend? Can you say, “I want Christ?” Oh, blessed soul! if you can say, “I want Christ,” soon you will wake up to the truth that Christ wants you. Precious, precious truth, Christ wants you! He has come into the world and sought you; you have not to seek Him. He has sought you; He came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost.

Well, Ruth goes on and gets to Bethlehem-Judah —blessed place! May you get to God’s house of bread—the feet of Jesus; may you reach the “house of bread” this day; the place where you shall find rest on the bosom of Jesus! God grant you to meet Jesus even this day! Would you not like to meet Jesus just now? Would you not like to know Jesus? Would you not like to have Jesus? Would you not like to be able to say, “This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend?” Would to God that this day I could introduce you, to Christ! What joy would fill my heart! It is the evangelist’s part, as an instrument, to introduce the sinner to the Savior. You want Jesus? The evangelist comes and tells you Jesus wants you. You want to be made happy? Jesus wants to make you happy. You want eternal life? Jesus wants to give you eternal life. You want your sins forgiven? Jesus wants to forgive you. You want rest? Jesus wants to give you rest. Oh, would you not like to rest on the very bosom of Jesus henceforth? You say, “Yes, I would. I am anxious.” Blessed sight! Do you talk to me of pictures? I say the two most lovely pictures under the sun are a company of saints happy in Christ, and a company of sinners wanting Christ.

Ah, you who want Christ—you are the very one Christ wants! He wants to save you. He wants to have you. He wants to take you with Him to everlasting glory. Will you let Him? Will you let Him save. you today? Will you yield yourself to Him now? Do you say, “I want Christ?” Well, listen, then. I am going to talk to you about a Friend.

Boaz is a lovely type of Christ as a kinsman. He was able to do the part of the near kinsman in His death and resurrection. He has bought the field.

Two things come out in Christ the Savior: He is the full revelation of God, and He is a perfect Man too. There is a Man who can deliver you from the lake of fire, a Man who can bring you in righteousness to God, “a mighty man of wealth,” and His name, His peerless name is JESUS. He was rich. He had everything. He was the eternal Son, the very delight of God, and in the grace of His heart He passed angels by, came into this world, and, oh, marvel of marvels, He who was God became a man that He might rescue you. The first man, in his pride, tried to become as God, and he became a sinner; but listen! He who was God became a man, in the grace and love of His heart, in order that He might die and deliver you from the power of sin and Satan, and bring you in righteousness to God. “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye, through his poverty, might be rich.” Oh, would you not like to have Christ? You say, “I am so poor.” Yes, but He is rich, this mighty Man of wealth! Tell me, now, would you not like to be possessed of Him? Would you not like that there should be a link between your soul and this mighty Man of wealth? All that God is He showed in His life, as man on earth. All that the first man is, was fully met by His cross, when He took upon Him, as a Substitute, all the sin and guilt, then, by dying, swept it all away, rose again, and went to heaven as man. He came down as God, He went up as man (God too, always, of course). He perfectly manifested God to man down here, and now He perfectly manifested man to God up there.

“How wondrous the glories that meet
In Jesus, and from His face shine!
His love is eternal and sweet,
‘Tis human, ‘tis also divine!
His glory—not only God’s Son
In manhood He had His full part—
And the union of both join’d in one
Forms the fountain of love in His heart.”

Oh, would you not like to know this Jesus?

Well, Ruth goes forth now to glean, “and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging to Boaz,” a very important item that. What does it mean, do you ask? It means this, it was not sublet, thank God. It belonged to Boaz, it was a place where Boaz got his rights, where he was everything. It is the place where Christ’s claims are fully acknowledged. There was a chief reaper too, which I doubt not prefigures the One who carries on the work down here now, the Holy Spirit. But the field belonged to Boaz, and Ruth is among his reapers now. Oh, it is a grand thing to be among Christ’s reapers. It is not sowing time now, it is reaping, and there is a day coming when He who sowed and they who reap shall rejoice together. His service is the sweetest joy under the sun; there is only one thing sweeter than His service, and that is Christ Himself. Do you ask, Is it hard work to serve Christ? I know of no joy like it, save the enjoyment of the Person of the Master.

And now, mark the intimacy between the master and the servants. “And Boaz said unto the reapers, The Lord be with you, and they answered him, The Lord bless thee.” It is beautiful; there is perfect communion between the Lord and the reapers, and it is most blessed to see the way He comes in and out among them.

“Whose damsel is this?” he now says. He had his eye on the stranger, he marked the stranger and asked about her, and the servant can tell him all about her. He had found out all about her. The Lord puts the servant oftentimes in full knowledge of what is going on in a soul, just in order to meet the need of the soul, by His word, through the servant. Here, however, we have a beautiful picture of the way the Lord Himself deals with a soul now. Look at the tenderness of the Lord; do not judge of the tenderness of the Master by the roughness oftentimes of the servant. “Hearest thou not, my daughter?” Listen how tenderly He speaks, the moment you enter the field where He is, the moment you become a gleaner in His field, this is what He says, “My daughter.”

But, you say, this is an Old Testament scene. Then listen to one from the New Testament. There was a poor woman, when the Master was on earth, sick and weary, and she hears of Jesus, and she wants to get to Him, for she says, “If I may but touch His clothes, I shall be whole.” The crowd throng and press Him. She follows with the multitude, trying to get near Him. The crowd sways and moves, but she presses forward, reaches the Person of Jesus, touches the hem of His garment, and, lo! she is healed. The woman would have gone away at once, I think, but Jesus stood still and said, “Who touched my clothes?” If she had gone away, though she was healed, the devil would have suggested, Ah, yes, you are healed now, but you will be just as bad again tomorrow. This the Lord knew, so He arrests her footsteps, as she had arrested His, and before she departs, most sweetly confirms her. When she heard of Jesus she came, and when she came she touched, and when she touched she was healed; and then, being healed by His power, He confirms her faith by His word, and sends her away with words which she could never forget, and which I trust may fall as sweetly on your ear and heart, dear reader: “Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole, go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.” Her past was—“thy faith hath made thee whole”; her present—“go in peace”; her future —“be whole of thy plague.” He assures her not only is she whole, but she is to be so ever after. Is not that a grand confirmation service?

But, best of all He owns relationship with her. Do you trust Him? Then He owns you. He acknowledges you the very moment you acknowledge and trust Him.

Again, there was a man sick of the palsy, in Mark 2, and they bring him where Jesus was. The house is full, but they take off the roof and let him down to the feet of Jesus, and when He saw their faith He said, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” And again, “Arise, take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.” And he went out by the door. He had come in by the roof, lying on his back on the bed. Thus, you see, whenever there is faith, the Lord owns relationship with the soul, and then sends it forth, a witness of His grace and power. There ought to be no cripples in the Lord’s camp.

“Then said Boaz to Ruth, Hearest thou not, my daughter? go not to glean in another field, neither go from hence, but abide here fast by my maidens; let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap, and go thou after them; have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee? And when thou art athirst, go unto the vessels, and drink of that which the young men have drawn. Then she fell on her face and bowed herself to the ground.” His grace breaks her down entirely. What does he do? He puts everything at her disposal, and, the moment a soul trusts Christ, He puts everything at its service. The whole range of Scripture blessing is at your disposal when you trust Him, and you have but to drink of the streams of that fountain of living waters, which His own death and resurrection have opened up for your thirsty soul.

“Then she said, Let me find favor in thy sight, for that thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly (to the heart—margin) unto thine handmaid.” Ah, beloved, when Jesus speaks He speaks to the heart, for there is such grace in His words; such tenderness, such pity and compassion, such healing of the wounds of the soul.

But this only the more deeply bows down the soul before Him, and, while His grace is thus discovered and enjoyed, there is also discovered and judged what self is. This is repentance; a most necessary exercise of the soul, and one which ever accompanies the learning of God’s grace. In figure, Ruth passes through this exercise when she says, “Though I be not like to one of thine handmaidens.” She feels, and every newborn soul feels, “I am utterly unworthy of His grace. I do not deserve such love.” She judges herself: it is repentance, self-condemnation.

“And Boaz said unto her, At meal time come thou hither.” You see your soul is to feed, but where is it to feed? In company with Christ, while withal it feeds on Christ. “Eat of the bread,” said Boaz. “He that cometh unto Me shall never hunger,” re-echoes Jesus. What bread is it? “The living bread,” the bread that “endureth to everlasting life.” And this Bread is Christ Himself. “I AM the living Bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall LIVE forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world....Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood HATH ETERNAL life” (John 6:51, 54).

“Dip thy morsel in the vinegar,” too, Boaz adds.

What does that mean? Participation: the soul that knows Jesus is to have full participation with Him in everything. He shares all with us, and feeds us with the finest of the wheat. “And he reached her parched corn.” Yes, beloved, that hand that was pierced for us on the cross is the hand that feeds us now, the hand that leads us and guides us. He likes to have us by His side. In the world we shall find people get tired of us, they do not always want us; but there is never a moment when Jesus does not want us by His side; no, never.

And to Christians I would say, Be sure and get your regular meals; get them in company with Christ, feeding on “the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.” There is nothing He has He does not place at your disposal the moment you trust Him; and He wants you to take it all from His own hand in full communion with Himself, so that He may see you enjoy, in His own blessed presence, those precious fruits of His work which love like His alone could make yours.

“And she did eat, and was sufficed, and left.” What a picture of a soul simply sitting down and fully receiving the grace of God! What is the first thing I do when His grace offers me Christ the living Bread? Why, I eat. What follows? I am sufficed, satisfied. The heart is full, the conscience is perfectly purged, the soul is at rest. In place of being, like the swallow, ever on the wing, or the sparrow, ever seeking wherewithal to satisfy its hunger, I am deeply content. The old ceaseless cravings and wants of the heart are perfectly, fully, eternally met by Christ and His work; and then, as a simple sequence, comes this, there is something (in our case an immensity) “left,” which we carry off for the benefit of others. Grace magnificently expands the heart, strips it of selfishness, and fills it with desires for the blessing of others. Till Christ is known, the heart is aching through its emptiness, for the world is too small to fill it, so deep are its caverns; but when Christ is learned, its deepest recesses are filled, and filled to overflowing, and there is abundance “left” for others.

But we must yet follow our gleaner, only, however, to learn deeper lessons of the loving heart of the Lord of the harvest. So now, when Ruth is risen up to glean, the word goes forth, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not: and let fall also some of the HANDFULS OF PURPOSE for her, and leave them that she may glean them.”

How beautiful is His grace! There is plenty of food, plenty. It is Bethlehem—the house of bread—she has reached most truly. Was not that a blessed handful the Lord gave that poor woman in the gospels, “Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.”

“But,” you say, “I am afraid of the judgment-day.” Well, then, here is a handful for you. “He that believeth, is not condemned”; and again, “He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me HATH EVERLASTING LIFE.” Gather up that handful, beat it out, take it home, and eat it. “Hath everlasting life, and SHALL NOT COME INTO CONDEMNATION, but IS PASSED from death unto LIFE.”

What have I for the present? EVERLASTING LIFE. What have I for the future? No CONDEMNATION.” What about the past? I was in DEATH, and have THE GOSPEL FROM THE BOOK OF RUTH! “PASSED FROM DEATH UNTO LIFE.” What a complete salvation! I have thanked the Lord for that handful many and many a time, dear reader; and I trust you will gather it, too, this day, and thank Him likewise for its priceless value.

“So she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley.” That is, Ruth knew exactly what she had got, and she had got it in a way in which she could use it. “The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting,” and many souls do the same. Ruth was not of that sort, she was a diligent gleaner, she was a wise gleaner. She did not take away any of the straw, she only took what she could make use of. What was the use of having it beaten out? She could take it away in a compact bundle and use it. And, when a soul gets hold of Christ, it knows what it has got; it is something tangible, no vague thing. A big bundle of straw may not have a single grain of wheat amongst it. Many people are what I might call straw-carriers. They are full of doubts, and fears, hopes, and feelings, and frames, and experiences, and maybe’s, and uncertainties, and ambiguities; and they have nothing distinct. They can never say, “I know.” Such, although they may be very diligent both as hearers and readers, have never “beaten out” their gleanings.

If you are of this sort, my reader, you take a plain word of warning, and do not trust any longer in uncertainties, but see to it, from God’s own Word, that Christ is yours and that you are Christ’s.

Ruth left the straw behind. What do you mean by leaving the straw? Why, leave the style of the speaker, or the eccentricity of the writer, leave everything I have said, and carry away only the golden grain of God’s precious, enduring Word, on which your soul is to feed and fatten. One word from God is worth all beside. Get your hearts full of Christ, and go and confess Him. When people have Christ in their hearts, it comes out. It is our privilege to know, without a doubt, what our God gives us. Ruth knew exactly what she had got, and she took it home.

“And her mother in law saw what she had gleaned; and she brought forth and gave to her that she had reserved after she was sufficed,”—that is, the parched corn that Boaz gave her at meal-time. She could not eat it all. He gave her more than she could eat, and she took it home. That is, Christ so satisfies your heart that you are full yourself, and have the flowings over for souls round about. What a blessed result of meeting with Christ!

But now, one warning word before I close, should this paper be in the hands of one who has not met Him. You have a soul. Is it saved or lost? You are going to heaven or to hell. Which is it? Friend, decide. Delay no longer. Loiterer, do not linger. Oh, decide now, or you, who are loitering now, and meaning to decide some day, may find that it is too late; that you are left out in the cold, and the door shut; that the gospel trumpet is no longer giving its sweet note of entreaty, or its warning note of alarm, but the trumpet of judgment is sounding instead your eternal death-knell, for you are without Christ. You are unsaved. Oh, lingerer, do not risk it! Turn to the Lord now. Decide now. Yield your heart to Him. Is He not worthy?

“Worthy of homage and of praise,
Worthy by all to be adored,
Exhaustless theme of heavenly lays,
Thou, Thou art worthy, Jesus, Lord!”

Has He never had your heart yet?

Then let Him take it now.

May your language be,

“Take Thou my heart, and let it be
Forever closed to all but Thee;
Thy willing servant, let me wear
The seal of love forever there.”

Will you not have Him now, and go and confess Him? Own you belong to Him, and let every one know you have, and love Him. And then may He feed your soul till you see the Lord in the air—caught up to be forever with Him!

“Then Naomi, her mother in law, said unto her, My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee? And now is not Boaz of our kindred, with whose maidens thou wast? Behold, he winnoweth barley tonight in the threshing floor. Wash thyself, therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the floor; but make not thyself known unto the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking. And it shall be when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do. And she said unto her, All that thou sayest unto me I will do. And she went down unto the floor, and did according to all that her mother in law bade her. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of corn: and she came softly and uncovered his feet, and laid her down. And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet. And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid; spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman. And he said, Blessed be thou of the Lord, my daughter; for thou hast showed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, inasmuch as thou followedst not young men, whether poor or rich. And now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requirest; for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman. And now it is true that I am thy near kinsman: howbeit there is a kinsman nearer than I. Tarry this night, and it shall be in the morning, that if he will perform unto thee the part of a kinsman, well; let him do the kinsman’s part: but if he will not do the part of a kinsman to thee, then will I do the part of a kinsman to thee, as the Lord liveth: lie down until the morning. And she lay at his feet until the morning: and she rose up before one could know another. And he said, Let it not be known that a woman came into the floor. Also he said, Bring the veil that thou hast upon thee, and hold it. And when she held it, he measured six measures of barley, and laid it on her: and she went into the city. And when she came to her mother in law, she said, Who art thou, my daughter? And she told her all that the man had done to her. And she said, These six measures of barley gave he me: for he said to me, Go not empty unto thy mother in law. Then said she, Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall: for the man will not be in rest, until he have finished the thing this day” (Ruth 3).

There is one little word in the first verse of this chapter that seems to characterize the whole chapter—the little word Rest. The early part of the book has given us a soul really decided for God. In chapter 1 we have Ruth decided for God, and the people of God. In chapter 2 we have what were the fruits of decision—meeting with Boaz, who is a type of Christ. She is broken down under a sense of His kindness, by His gracious words, but then she leaves Him, type of a soul that has got a sense of Christ’s grace, touched the hem of His garment, but then somehow gets away out of the conscious enjoyment of His presence and of His Person. Ruth goes back to her mother in law, and we hear, for a time, nothing more about Boaz. Now, to be merely benefited, or saved by Christ, without the full enjoyment of Himself abidingly, is not enough. What Christ gives is rest—full, abiding, present, and eternal rest. We get, then, rest in the third chapter, and relationship we shall find unfolded in the fourth.

Chapter 1 is Decision for Christ; chapter 2 Meeting with Christ; chapter 3 Rest in Christ; and chapter 4 Relationship to Christ — being united to Him.

Naomi says, “My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee?” I want to ask you, my friend, one little question here. Have you rest? There is no real rest for the soul, till it is actually in the place Ruth illustrates in this chapter, and where is that? Where does Ruth find rest? At the feet of Boaz. And where does a soul find rest? At the feet of Jesus! Ruth feels Boaz is the only one in whom she can implicitly confide, and she goes and places herself under his wing. She does what the Lord allows more than one sinner to do in the gospels,—places herself under his protection,—gets to his feet. Look, for instance, at the woman who was a sinner, in Luke 7 She gets straight to the feet of Jesus, and see how He blesses her! Have you found rest at the feet of Jesus yet? You say, What do you mean? Ah! it is clear, then, you do not know it. You have not found rest yet. You have never yet been quietly, calmly, seated at the feet of Jesus.

There is no real rest in the world; if you watch the faces as you pass along, how you see care, and anxiety, and restlessness, depicted in almost every countenance, leaving indelible lines. How rarely do you meet a person of whom you can say, What a restful face! Now, there are three rests spoken of in Scripture, and it will be my business in this paper to briefly open up the first two. You know where they both occur, in the end of Matt. 11, after what had been a stormy, dark day to the Lord Jesus. John the Baptist, His forerunner, was doubting if He were the Christ; Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, the cities where His mighty works had been done, had refused to believe Him; men had called Him “a gluttonous man and a winebibber,” and He turns away from this dark, restless scene, upward to His Father, and says, “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. All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son; and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him” (Matt. 11:25-27).

Oh, reader, are you a babe to whom the Son can reveal the depths of the Father’s heart? The Father’s heart, the Father’s bosom, can only be known by revelation, but the Son perfectly reveals the Father.

Then the Lord turns round again to this restless, troubled world, and gives the loveliest invitation that ever fell on mortal ears. Resting Himself in the Father’s perfect love, He calls every laboring, laden, restless soul to come to Him, undertaking to introduce the new-comer, whoever he may be, or whatever he may have been, to the same sphere of restful delight which He Himself had in the Father’s love, spite of any surrounding circumstance. Never from His blessed lips fell there words more God—revealing, soul-need-meeting, love-begetting, and heart-breaking than these—”COME UNTO ME ALL YE THAT

LABOR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.”

Beloved, there is rest for the laboring, rest for the heavy laden, rest for the weary, rest for the anxious, rest for the troubled, at the feet of Jesus.

IT IS REST OF CONSCIENCE. He gives you rest of conscience first of all, a perfect clearing of all that YOU HAVE DONE, through what HE HAS DONE. Have you been thinking you must do something to be saved? Such a thought is a delusion of the devil, and a snare. You can do nothing but sin, and you have surely done plenty in that line already. “GOD SAW (what you never did, perhaps) that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that EVERY IMAGINATION Of THE THOUGHTS OF HIS HEART (not to name his acts) was ONLY EVIL continually” (Gen. 6:5). This is your moral condition, and what fit for God can come from you, then? Nothing, simply NOTHING. “Yes,” you reply, “I see that, and I have given up trying to do anything or to be better.” What are you waiting for now, then? “For what Christ will do.” This is another snare and delusion of the devil. Christ’s work is already finished. He will DO no more for you than He has done. He can, in this aspect, do no more. He has died once. He has suffered once. He has borne sins once. He has atoned for them once. His blood has been shed once. All this is finished, and never will or can be repeated. God has accepted His sacrifice, and raised Him from the dead in token of His acceptance thereof, and of His perfect delight in Christ.

If, therefore, your sins are not now put away from God’s sight by what Christ HAS DONE, they never can be, for you cannot do it yourself, and Christ will do no more in order to do it. Now, then, do you see? Either the work which gives rest to the conscience is DONE, or IT NEVER CAN BE. Which is the truth? “IT IS FINISHED,” was the dying Savior’s legacy of love to the heavy laden sinner, and the soul that hears and believes gets REST about the solemn matters of sin, iniquity, transgression, and God’s judgment thereof, through faith in Jesus, who died to secure this rest by putting away the sin which hindered it, and then says, “Come unto me... and I will GIVE YOU REST.”

Then He adds, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall FIND REST UNTO your souls.” This rest is quite different from the rest of conscience which I get through the work of Christ; it is the REST OF HEART, the rest of spirit that I get by communion with Him as a living Person from day to day. The first rest is the Sinner’s rest, the second rest is the Saint’s rest, and there is still another rest, of which the apostle speaks in Hebrews 4:9: “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” That is God’s rest, which we are going to get by-and-by. A sinner gets rest of conscience in the work of Christ; the saint gets rest of heart in the Person of Christ, and then there is God’s rest—GLORY, where sin and its fruits can never come, into which He is going to take us who believe, spirit, soul, and body, for eternity: and that is the end of the path on which the soul enters who once trusts Jesus, comes to Jesus, confides in Jesus.

Now, tell me, would you not like to know these rests? You know the world cannot give you rest. Have you rest as you think of Death? Have you rest as you think of the Day of Judgment? No! You know you have not; “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked”; no peace till you come to Christ. Those who have come to Him have rest. It is impossible for a soul to have come to Christ and not to have rest. If you have not rest you have not simply come to Jesus, that’s all; you may have come half-way, and you may be a little self-complacent, too, that you are different now from what you used to be, but there is no real rest save in personal contact with the Lord Himself, getting alone with Him, and finding out how He meets the need of the soul.

In the second chapter, Boaz seeks Ruth, and speaks to her when there are plenty of others by, but in the third chapter Ruth goes where she knows she will find Boaz, and speaks to him alone; and when a soul is bowed down with a sense of its own ungodliness, with a sense of its own utter unworthiness, and the grace that is in Christ, you will find that it will withdraw, and feel that the Lord Jesus alone is the only One to whom it can really go. Ah, beloved, your whole burden is never rolled off until you get to Him alone, until you cast yourself unreservedly upon the bosom of Jesus.

Naomi says, “Shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee?” And where does she advise her to seek rest? At the feet of Boaz; and to you, dear unsaved one, I say, at the Savior’s feet there is peace for you, there is pardon for you, there is forgiveness for you, there is life for you, there is rest for you; to Him, then, to Him you must go.

Ruth is the picture of a thoroughly earnest soul. She does what she is bidden. She goes where Boaz is, and she casts herself down at his feet.

Perhaps some soul says, “Must I not make myself better first, must I not do something first?” You cannot, try what you will, you cannot make yourself one bit better, one bit more fit for the Savior’s presence. “All, but,” you say, “Ruth was told to wash and anoint herself.” Yes, hut you are not, and that is the difference, for, as Job says, “If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch and mine own clothes shall abhor me.” That is, all the efforts of man are not the least use. Snow water is the very purest of all water, and what does snow water typify? Rites and ceremonies, and everything else that springs merely from man’s flesh. People are trying all this, but it does not do, snow water does not cleanse from sin; nothing can cleanse you before God, or give relief to your soul, but the precious blood of Christ. To try to improve yourself is only a snare of the devil to keep you away from the Savior. There is a little hymn that says:

“If you wait till you are better
You will never come at all.”

The devil knows that, and so he whispers, “Improve yourself, try and make yourself better.” No, no! Heed him not; Come! Come! Come as you are; the more you labor, the more tired you will get, and do you get any nearer? Not a bit, only more burdened. It is a great thing when a soul is heavy laden, and when the burden gets intolerable. The devil tries to hinder you finding it intolerable by slipping the burden first on one shoulder, then on the other; now on the bosom, and then on the back, but the burden is there all the same; rest you never find till you find it at the feet of Jesus. Oh, listen to his loving call: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “I will GIVE,” what a word for a helpless sinner! If you only knew the grace of His heart and how He wants to give you salvation, you would trust Him at once, and receive what your weary soul needs—rest.

And now Boaz speaks to Ruth. She has done nothing but place herself under his protection, “And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth (which means “beauty”) thine handmaid; spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid, for thou art a near kinsman. And he said, Blessed be thou of the Lord, my daughter, for thou hast showed more kindness at the latter end than at the beginning.” How the Lord delights to have a soul in living contact with Himself. He says, “Thou hast showed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning.” What does he mean by that? Why, in the 2nd chapter she had gone into the field merely as a gleaner, and there had met Boaz. Now she had gone straight to him, confided in him, put her case entirely into his hands. “Take charge of all my affairs, I claim thy care,” she seems to say, “thou art a near kinsman,” that is, the heart claims Christ, and cannot do without Christ.

Does your heart say that? Do you claim Him? “How can I claim Him?” you ask. By faith. Faith can always appropriate Christ. Because you and I were under sentence of death, He became a man, died, and by His dying abolished death, and put away sin; and now, in resurrection, He takes all who believe into living union with Himself, so that by faith I can go to Him and say, “Thou art a near kinsman.” What is that lovely word which He sends on the morning of His resurrection to those who trust in Him? Listen, “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” Who are His brethren? Those who confide in Him. He acknowledges them, He takes the kinsman’s place. He says, “It is true that I am thy near kinsman.” He takes our place, under the judgment of God, in grace upon the cross, takes our sins upon Him, goes into death and the grave, but He rises from among the dead, and the first thing He does is to share all His spoils with us.

Oh, who would not have such a Christ? a Christ who says to the faith that claims Him, “Blessed be thou of the Lord, my daughter.” He delights to have a soul in close quarters with Himself. Look at the blind Bartimaeus; He first brings him near to Him, and then He gives him what he wants. Look at Zaccheus again; He brings him down from the tree and goes with him to his house. He delights to have a soul near to Himself; nothing rejoices His heart like the simple confidence of a soul who can trust Him entirely.

“Thou hast showed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning.” That is, he says, “You used not to trust me, but now you do. You have more confidence in me than you had.” What a lovely picture of the heart of Jesus! Satan says, “Don’t you trust Him; He will not have you; you are not good enough”; but do not you believe Satan. You trust Jesus, there is nothing He values like confidence; He calls it “kindness” even. He has had hard and cruel treatment from many: will you not show him kindness? Many scorn and despise Him; do you trust Him. Does he see you confiding in Him? Behold then the rich fruit of this confidence. “I will do to thee all that thou requirest.” He says, Every need of your heart I will meet. He owns Himself your kinsman. He owns you. He saves you entirely. He does all you require. You have nothing to do but to be still and trust Him.

“Howbeit there is a kinsman nearer than I.” Yes, there is a kinsman very near, and some of you have had very close dealings with him. You have tried to please him, tried to satisfy his claims, tried to meet his requirements. “Yes,” you say, “I have tried to keep the law.” You are right, there is the nearer kinsman, but can the law redeem? Can the law do a kinsman’s part? No; the law can only condemn, can only prove you guilty; it cannot redeem.

“But if he will not do the part of a kinsman to thee, then will I do the part of a kinsman to thee, as the Lord liveth.” You have nothing to do but to trust Him. He takes all upon Himself. He does the whole work. He blesses you. He brings you to God, and if you have got to go back into the city (and you and I have to go back and walk through the world, after He has saved us), see how He sends you back. He sends you back full. “He said, Bring the veil that thou hast upon thee, and hold it. And when she held it, He measured six measures of barley and laid it on her, and she went into the city.” Six mea• suers of barley! She could glean for herself about one ephah, and not a bad gleaning either; but now see what He gives! And mark this, too. She goes empty to him, holds the empty veil. Ah, there is something carried away that is very tangible,. when I go to Christ. I carry away something very substantial that I have got from Him. Six measures. And what are His measures? They are filled full, pressed down, and running over; that is what He gives a soul that simply trusts in Him.

Then Naomi says, “Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall: for the man will not be in rest until he have finished the thing this day.” My rest depends on the fact that He will not rest until there is something finished that enables Him to bless me perfectly. You have only to sit still and hear what Jesus says. Cast yourself simply on Him, and then you learn what rest really is. Boaz had something to do, but has Christ something to do? No! But will He not do something? No! Has He done it, then? Yes, for we have heard those blessed words, the precious legacy of a dying Savior, “IT IS FINISHED.” “It is finished.”

“Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there: and, behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by; unto whom he said, He, such a one! turn aside, sit down here. And he turned aside, and sat down. And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, Sit ye down here. And they sat down. And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of the country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech’s: And I thought to advertise thee, saying, Buy it before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people. If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know: for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee. And he said, I will redeem it. Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance. And the kinsman said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance: redeem thou my right to thyself; for I cannot redeem it. Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbor: and this was a testimony in Israel. Therefore the kinsman said unto Boaz, Buy it for thee. So he drew off his shoe. And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech’s, and all that was Chilion’s and Mahlon’s, of the hand of Naomi. Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day. And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are witnesses. The Lord make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel, and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel: and do thou worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Bethlehem: And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of the seed which the Lord shall give thee of this young woman. So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto her, the Lord gave her conception, and she bare a son. And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel. And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age: for thy daughter in law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath borne him. And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it. And the women, her neighbors, gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi: and they called his name Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David” (Ruth 4:1-17).

The complete and thorough espousal of our cause by Jesus is that which leads to our espousal to Him. When once I learn my own utter weakness and incapacity as a sinner to rightly respond to the claims of God, I am glad to have my case taken up by One who can settle every difficulty and liquidate every claim that lay against me. This Jesus does.

By nature my relationship to God is grave and serious to a degree. The Psalmist acutely felt it when he said, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psa. 51:5). To this true witness Paul adds his testimony, “And you who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience; among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. 2:1-3).

What solemn statements of God’s Word regarding man in nature!

Born in sin—shapen in iniquity—dead in sins—children of disobedience—children of wrath. Man’s history begins in sin, and ends in wrath. Such, dear reader, is your present relationship to God if not yet brought, through grace, to own your state, and to trust simply in the Lord Jesus. If this latter be true of you, however, everything is changed, and the above-quoted Scriptures, though they most truly describe what was your relation to God, in no wise apply to you now. Everything is altered the moment I have simply come to Jesus. “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new, and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself” (2 Cor. 5:17-18).

Jesus is my Savior, and does a Savior’s part, and all this in view of a deeper purpose of His heart, that is, to have me in relationship to Himself, as a member of His Body, that blessed assembly, which, as His Bride, He will have forever by His side, the partner of His joys and glory, as well as the witness of His grace.

To have believers thus united to Himself is that for which He apprehends us. No pains, no trouble, are spared to effect this deep and eternal purpose of His heart, and in the action of Boaz, in this 4th chapter, we have this precious truth illustrated.

“Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there; and, behold, the kinsman, of whom Boaz spake, came by.” Boaz states the case to this nearer kinsman; but is there any help to be got from the nearer kinsman? Will he redeem? No, he cannot. He says, “I cannot redeem....lest I mar mine own inheritance.” The law can do nothing for the poor guilty sinner but prove his guilt.

You remember the parable in the New Testament of the man who went down from Jerusalem, the place of royal grace, to Jericho, the place of cursing—figure of man, as a sinner, turning his back on God and the place of blessing, and going down the high road to hell. The poor man falls among thieves, who strip him, and wound him, and leave him half dead. “And by chance there came down a certain priest that way.” By chance, mark. “Ah,” you say, “here is just the right man, here is a man of a tender heart, a man who can help,” but “He passed by on the other side.” “I cannot touch him,” he says. Why? Because to touch him would have been to disqualify himself, to make himself unclean; he would, so to speak, have “marred his own inheritance.”

Then there comes a Levite, the second functionary of the law, but he passes by too, he cannot touch him or help him. The priest and the Levite were the “nearer kinsmen” of the wounded man, they were both nationally and religiously connected with him, but they cannot help him; the law cannot help, it can only condemn those who are under it. But when the Samaritan, type of the Lord Jesus, came down, he, though not bound to touch the wounded man, who had no claim on him, came where he was, went right down to the spot where he lay, picked him up, and set him in a perfect place of safety, yea, put him in his own place. The law could not help the sinner, so passing by, it made the way clear for the Savior. The nearer kinsman could not redeem, and the way was made clear for Boaz; there was no reason why Boaz should take up Ruth’s case, save that he loved her; and there is no reason why Christ should take up our case save that He loved us.

Jesus is ready to do a kinsman’s part. He buys us and brings us back to God by the wonderful redemption price of His own life-blood which He shed for us. But you ask “Am I worthy?” That is not the question. The whole point is, not you worthiness, but the grace of Christ. A soul brought into contact with the law is necessarily miserable and self-condemned, for its claims can not be responded to, for “by the law is the knowledge of sin”; the law gives a man a sight of his guilt, his sin and unworthiness, and the deeper the soul feels that the better, for the more it has the sense of its utter ruin the more suited is it to Christ, as then it is a question of only the total ruin of the sinner and the absolute grace of the Savior. Oh, take the place of utter ruin, of being thoroughly lost and helpless; own yourself a sinner, and nothing but a sinner, and then you will find what the grace of His heart is. Nothing can be done to improve you; Christ takes up the case, and He does the whole work; it is not you doing your part, and Christ doing His, but He has done the whole work. The gospel is not, as one described it once, like a boat pulled by two oars, one oar “faith,” and the other oar “works.” That is the devil’s gospel; you do your part, and Christ will do His! No, no, He saves the soul; He puts away sin; He brings in redemption; He settles all with God; He brings us to God, and then He says, “You will walk differently now, of course, now that you belong to Me.”

“And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are witnesses this day that I have bought all that was Elimelech’s, and all that was Chilion’s and Mahlon’s, of the hand of Naomi. Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife.” The price that Boaz paid we are not told, but the property and the coveted person became his. Redemption gave him title to claim Ruth as his bride. And have we not heard of One who both said and acted thus? “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field; the which, when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field” (Matt. 13:44). The field is the world. The hidden treasure defines the souls in it precious to the Savior’s heart, and for the sake of them “He selleth all that he hath,” gives up everything, and in sorrow, and woe, and bloody sweat, and death, and for the glory of God, He, on the cross, makes propitiation, meets the righteous demands of God, pays down the ransom price of His own life, and then makes all His own by purchase. For the sake of the treasure—“His own”—He buys all.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matt. 13:45, 46). The pearl is usually considered to be Christ, to possess whom, the sinner sells all. Such a thought is totally without foundation in Scripture. What has the sinner to sell? Nothing, unless you count his sins as being worth something, which is worse than folly. The sinner is guilty, defiled, ruined, bankrupt, lost, and dead in sins, and can do nothing but what ensures God’s righteous judgment. To talk of his “selling,” therefore, is folly, he has nothing to sell, and Christ cannot be valued at any price you may name.

But how simple and surpassing sweet becomes the similitude when I see Christ as the heavenly merchantman, who, beholding the Church, figured here as a “goodly pearl,” sells all to make her His own. Little wonder that He says, “One pearl of GREAT price,” for the price was Himself, and who, I say, can value Christ aright? None!

As the pearl lies deep in the mighty waters, and has to be fetched up by the venturesome diver, so the Church (composed, as it is, of sinners saved by grace) lay deep in sin, ruin, and condemnation, the mighty waters of divine wrath and judgment righteously impending on every soul thereof.

And what did Jesus do? “Christ also LOVED the church, and (1) GAVE HIMSELF for it: (2) that He might SANCTIFY and CLEANSE it with the washing of water by the Word; (3) that He might PRESENT IT TO HIMSELF a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).

Yes, blessed be His name! Deep into the dark waters of our condition did He fling Himself, that by dying He might blot out our guilt, and then, rising from the dead, connect us with Himself in everlasting glory. His love was the spring of it all, and here is presented in a threefold aspect. In the past, “He gave Himself,”—that settled every question of our guilty state before God. For the present, He sanctifies, purifying us by the water of the Word. In the future, He will present us to Himself as the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, glorious and spotless, suited to Himself, His intelligent helpmeet forever, sharer of His glories and joys. What love! Our past, present, and future are canopied with a love that leaves nothing to be desired but a more appreciative heart, to return to Him the blessed affections which fill His own bosom, and which alone can be gratified by such return, for love is only satisfied with love, and can brook no less requital.

“So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife.” What an unexpected, but bright, and happy, finale to the path that opened full of sorrow and loneliness, when with firm purpose of heart she turned her back on Moab and its gods, to go to Israel’s land and to confide in Israel’s God. But such is this touching history (full of deepest meaning, too, as truly typical of Israel’s future days of blessing under a risen and reigning Christ), and so, too, dear reader, will it be with you, if Jesus is now the object of your heart by faith. You are related to Him in a new, living, and eternal manner, by the Holy Spirit which dwells in you. The nuptial day is not yet come, but in the meantime the Holy Spirit forgets not to say, “I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2-3).

As espoused to Him, O beloved, let there be chastity of heart to Him, simplicity, fervor, faithfulness, earnestness, confidence, unfeigned affection, untiring industry, unswerving loyalty of love, till the moment when He shall come and gather us up to be with Himself, and then shall every desire of His heart and ours be satisfied. He will have us in His own likeness and glory, and we shall have the joy of unbroken fellowship with Him forever. I wonder not at all that in Revelation 19:7-9, of that day it is said, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

It is the day for which He waits. Shall not we, with joy and patience, do the same?

The place nearest His heart, the highest place of all, is the place we shall get by-and-by. He will come and take us into the Father’s house, and then the marriage of the Lamb will be consummated.

Oh, blessed Lord, hasten the day!

But, before I close this sweet and fruitful book, I must put a few pointed queries to you?

Now, tell me, will you be there? Are you going to spend your eternity in those bright scenes of eternal joy and rest, or are you going to spend your eternity shut out from them, and in the lake of fire?

The day is coming, dear unsaved soul, when all you cling to so tightly will be torn from your grasp most ruthlessly, and you must pass into eternity. And, listen, you have not wanted Christ here, and you have lived without Him here, and you must live on without Jesus there. When a man dies here, he passes out of the sight of his fellow—men, which is the first death: but then there comes the second death, and what is that? He passes from God’s sight forever!

Ah, beloved, does he still exist? Listen! “The fearful,” that is, those who are afraid to confess Christ, ashamed to own Jesus now; “and the unbelieving,” that is, the scoffer, the rationalist, the skeptic; “and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death” (Rev. 21:8).

Sinner, there is your eternity! As God lives in heaven, you must live in the lake of fire. The first death closes irrevocably all intercourse with man; the second death closes irrevocably all intercourse with God. And oh, I ask, are you going to brave it? Are you going to risk it? Do you say, “I do not believe that bit of the Bible?” Then throw it all in the fire. It is all true, or none of it is true. If God is worth believing at all, He is worth believing entirely; and whether you believe or not, still is His word true. But then there is the other side, Jesus says, “I want you to live with Me. I want you to be loved by Me. I want you to dwell forever in My Father’s house.” But man often, alas, replies, “I would rather live without God, and die without Him, and be damned without Him, than bow down to be blessed by Jesus.”

Ah, my friend, there will be no pride in hell; there will be no rebellion in hell, and you will carry down your memory with you there, and then you will remember how His grace besought you here. Oh, turn, turn to Jesus now, accept Him now, and in that day when He makes up His jewels you will be there, as, through His grace, I know I shall be there. If He has loved me enough to die for me, He is worthy of having all my heart. You may depend upon it you could not do a better thing than turn to Jesus now. He will give you rest for your conscience through His work, rest for your heart in Himself, from day to day, and, by-and-by, He will stoop down and lift you into the rest of God, where your song shall be of Him and His grace through all eternity’s blessed bridal day!

“O precious Savior, deep Thy pain,
When forth the life-blood flow’d
That washed our souls from every stain,
That paid the debt we owed.

Cleansed from our sins, renewed by grace,
Thy royal throne above
(Blest Savior) is our destined place,
Our portion there Thy love.

Thine eye, in that bright cloudless day,
Shall, with supreme delight,
Thy fair and glorious bride survey,
Unblemish’d in Thy sight.”

Joseph is a most beautiful and complete type of the Lord Jesus in the days of His humiliation and in the days of His exaltation. The day is not come yet when God will compel men to give Jesus His due; because God has, what Pharaoh had not, long patience, and the long-suffering of the Lord is salvation.

Joseph, you will remember, went out in the guilelessness and love of his heart to meet his brethren (Gen. 37). They plotted against him to slay him, and at length he was sold to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver, the price of the meanest slave. And I need not remind you of Another, who came from His Father’s house to see how His brethren fared, and met with precisely the same treatment—”His own received Him not”—and at length for thirty pieces of silver He was betrayed, and sold, and then cast out of this world; not into a dungeon, but into a grave.

It is true loving hands took Him down from the cross, and placed Him in a sepulcher; but wicked hands sealed Him there, and the world hoped never to see Him again; “but God raised Him from the dead.” The One whom men slew God raised up.

He came in all the love of His heart; but man had no love for Him. I ask you, my reader, Have you any love in your heart for Him? Does He look in and see in your heart affection for Himself? If not, do not you be the one to judge those who cast Him out in the day of His lowliness and humiliation.

As Pharaoh placed Joseph by his own side in his day, and they cried “Bow the knee” before him (Gen. 41:40-43), so God has placed Jesus at His right hand today, and commands men everywhere to bow to Him. Every knee shall bow to Jesus; but God would have you bow your knee-and more, bow your heart-to Jesus now. Have you gone down in His presence, delighted to own His value now, delighted to call Him Lord? If not, the sooner you do, the better will it be for you.

The humiliation of Jesus gave Him a moral claim on God for exaltation, and He has exalted Him, and “given Him a name which is above every name.” There is no name like the name of Jesus. God has declared that all shall own Him Lord—angels, men, and demons—and you may be sure all includes you. The demons never owned Him Lord when He was on earth, but the day will come when God will compel them to own Him Lord. And for you, my reader, when is to be your day of owning Him Lord? now, when He is waiting on you in long-suffering grace, or in the day of His power, when you must bow? “Bow the knee” is God’s word to you now.

Doubtless to many a proud Egyptian noble there was great humiliation in having to bow to this Hebrew servant; but the day of famine came, and neither their pride nor their parentage would meet the pangs of famine. Then they cried to Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s word was, “Go to Joseph.” And many a soul in trouble cries to God. What is God’s answer, as it were? “Go to Jesus.” Have you, my reader, the sense of soul hunger? God’s word is, “Go to Jesus.” Do you say, I know what soul hunger is; I would like to be saved, if I knew how to go to Jesus? Look and see, in this interesting narrative, how they came to Joseph.

He was, according to the meaning of his name Zaphnath-Paaneah, “a revealer of secrets,” and “the savior of the age.” And is not this what Jesus is?

Look at Him in the fourth of John, when that poor woman meets Him at the well. Does He not show Himself to her as the revealer of secrets, when He said to her, “Thou hast had five husbands”? Ah! Christ knows all about you; Christ knows every sin, and for those who believe in Him, He has pardoned every one. Knowing all about us, He loved us; and loving us, He came down to save us.

When the woman found He knew all about her, does she fly? No, she stays and talks with Him, and one moment she is a convicted sinner, and the next Christ reveals Himself to her, and she leaves her water-pot and goes into the city, and says, “Come, see a Man which told me all things that ever I did; is not this the Christ?” Instead of being afraid of Him, she calls to all to come and know Him too; and they come and find He is not only the Revealer of Secrets, but the Savior of the age—the true Joseph.

Let us look at how Joseph received his brethren when they came to him in their need.

“Now when Jacob saw that there was corn in Egypt, Jacob said unto his sons, Why do ye look one upon another? And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt; get you down thither, and buy for us from thence; that we may live, and not die. And Joseph’s ten brethren went down to buy corn in Egypt” (Gen. 42:1-3). They heard that there was corn in Egypt. They heard that there was deliverance to be had if they could only get it, and they were perishing. They heard there was salvation, and they felt their need, and felt they would like to be saved, but they could not get salvation without going to the savior. They could not get deliverance apart from the deliverer; they could not get food in their hunger save from Joseph—Joseph the despised one, the one they had hated, the one they had cast out and sold, but the one whom God had raised up to have every resource in his power, and everything that could meet their need.

And you, my reader, do you feel you are in need of salvation? Have you heard of a deliverance which you would like to be yours? Is your soul hungry, and have you heard of “bread enough and to spare”? Have you heard of salvation that others have known, and would you know it too? Then you must come into living contact with the Savior. It is from the Savior only you can get salvation. Jesus is that Savior, and He waits and longs to save you.

Joseph’s brethren are in need now, and they come to Joseph; and you must do just the same—come to Jesus.

“And Joseph was the governor over the land, and he it was that sold to all the people of the land; and Joseph’s brethren came, and bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth” (vs. 6).

They come and bow themselves down to Joseph; and it is a blessed thing when you are compelled, even by your need, to bow to Jesus, for He is the only One who can meet that need.

“And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spake roughly unto them; and he said unto them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food. And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him....And Joseph said unto them, That is it that I spake unto you, saying, Ye are spies. Hereby ye shall be proved: By the life of Pharaoh ye shall not go forth hence, except your youngest brother come hither.... And he put them all together into ward three days” (vss. 7-17).

His brethren did not know Joseph, but he knew them. He spake roughly to them. They thought he was a hard man. Do you think Christ is an “austere Man”? He will tell you what you are; tell you that you are a sinner full of enmity to God, that there is no good thing in you. People do not like that. They do not like to be shown what is in their hearts.

Joseph deals with his brethren as God does with the sinner, for God must get at our consciences, and must make us feel and know what we have been and are. So Joseph’s dealings with his brethren arouse conscience, for they say, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us” (vs. 21).

It is a wonderful thing when the soul is brought to this point, to own itself a guilty sinner before God. God must have reality. Have you, my reader, ever seen yourself thus in the light of God’s presence? Has your conscience ever been awakened to cry, I am undone; I am verily guilty?

“And Joseph turned himself about from them and wept.” And did not Another greater than Joseph weep over guilty Jerusalem; and not only weep, but shed His precious blood because of the love of His heart to guilty man?

“Then Joseph commanded to fill their sacks with corn, and to restore every man’s money into his sack” (vs. 25). What is the lesson of the money in the sack? That if you are to get salvation, you cannot buy it. You are too poor to buy it, and God is too rich to sell it. Salvation must be God’s free gift, and you must have it as a gift, or not have it at all.

Joseph’s brethren come back, and tell their father all that Joseph had said; and Jacob refuses to let Benjamin go down with them, for he says, “His brother is dead, and he is left alone; if mischief befall him by the way in the which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.”

But the famine increases. Their need increases; food they must have or die. Judah offers to be surety for his brother, and Jacob is constrained to let the lad go; but he says, “Do this: take of the best fruits in the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present.... And take double money in your hand; and the money that was brought again in the mouth of your sacks, carry it again in your hand; peradventure it was an oversight. Take also your brother, and arise, go again unto the man: and God Almighty give you mercy before the man” (Gen. 43:11-14).

This is man’s way of getting salvation. People think they are going to be saved by propitiating God. They will work and give alms, and what not. But it will not do. No money will buy salvation, and God does not want appeasing. He is waiting to be gracious, waiting for the moment when He can display what is in His heart, which is only love.

Joseph’s brethren came down again to him, and when he saw Benjamin he gave commandment that they should be brought into his house. “And the men were afraid, because they were brought into Joseph’s house.” Yes, the soul wakes up to learn it is guilty, and then it fears the presence of God. But Joseph spake comfortably to them to win their hearts, and they sat at meat with him. “And the men marveled one at another. And he took and sent messes unto them from before him; but Benjamin’s mess was five times so much as any of theirs. And they drank, and were merry with him.”

Then in chapter 44 they have to confess their sins. Judah says, “God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants” (vs. 16). This is the point God would bring us to. Not only conscience making us see our state, but also there is the owning of that state. “I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” So said David in Psalm 32, and so must every soul that really turns to God.

In Genesis 45 the wonderful climax is reached. Joseph reveals himself to them. “I am Joseph.” The Joseph they had sold as a slave stood before them as a ruler over all the land, but meeting them in all the grace of his heart. He caused every one else to go out, and the guilty were left alone in the presence of the savior. What a lovely picture of divine grace follows: “And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt” (Gen. 45:4).

When the work in the conscience is done, then the Lord can come near and reveal Himself. He never comes and reveals Himself till the sinner takes his true place—is angry with himself.

“Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither,” he says, “for God did send me before you to preserve life.” You have been guilty, Joseph says, but God had a purpose in it.

And man was guilty of nailing the Savior to the cross: but God had His own thoughts, His own meaning in it all, and that very death, on the cross, of the Savior, becomes the basis and groundwork, through atonement, of the great deliverance Christ accomplishes for the sinner; salvation for him is the fruit of the sufferings of the Savior there.

But after all this display of the heart of Joseph to his brethren, and after seventeen years of caring for them, and giving them the best of everything, and rewarding them only love for their hatred, the last chapter of Genesis shows they still did not fully know Joseph.

“When Joseph’s brethren saw that their father was dead, they said Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him” (Gen. 50:15-17).

All this is like some doubting, fearing, unhappy Christians, who tell me they believe on the Lord, and yet they have not peace. They are full of fears; they are not sure He has received them and forgiven them: they do not know His heart; and another thing, they have never had all out with Him. Have no reserves, my reader. Have it all out with Jesus, and do not you be the one to make our Joseph weep; for the heart of the Lord Jesus feels today your lack of trust in Him, after all He has done for you, all the kindness and the love He has shown to you. Wound not then His loving heart by any lack of confidence in Him.

“And Joseph said unto them, Fear not.” That is just the way the Lord Jesus loves to comfort the soul. To get the confidence of the heart, He says to the trembling one, “Fear not: I am Jesus.”

Joseph says again, “Fear ye not: I will nourish you and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.”

And that is what Jesus says; for we are not only sheltered by His blood, but saved by His life. He will nourish and care for each one all the way along. Oh, my reader, believe Him simply, and never wound His heart again by one single doubt.

“JACOB’S WELL WAS THERE”

Sweet was the hour, O Lord, to Thee

At Sychar’s lonely well,

When a poor outcast heard Thee there

Thy great salvation tell.

Thither she came; but, oh! her heart,

All filled with earthly care,

Dreamed not of Thee, nor thought to find

The hope of Israel there.

Lord! ‘twas Thy power unseen that drew

The stray one to that place,

In solitude to learn from Thee

The secrets of Thy grace.

There Jacob’s erring daughter found

Those streams unknown before,

The water brooks of life, that make

The weary thirst no more.

And, Lord, to us, as vile as she,

Thy gracious lips have told

That mystery of love revealed

At Jacob’s well of old.

In spirit, Lord, we’ve sat with Thee

Beside the springing well

Of life and peace, and heard Thee there

Its healing virtues tell.

Dead to the world, we dream no more

Of earthly pleasures now;

Our deep, divine, unfailing spring

Of grace and glory Thou!

No hope of rest in aught beside,

No beauty, Lord, we see;

And, like Samaria’s daughter, seek,

And find our all in Thee.

SWEET was the hour, O Lord, to Thee

At Sychar's lonely well,

When a poor outcast heard Thee there

Thy great salvation tell.

Thither she came; but, oh! her heart,

All filled with earthly care,

Dreamed not of Thee, nor thought to find

The hope of Israel there.

Lord! 'twas Thy power unseen that drew

The stray one to that place,

In solitude to learn from Thee

The secrets of Thy grace.

There Jacob's erring daughter found

Those streams unknown before,
The water-brooks of life, that make

The weary thirst no more.

And, Lord, to us, as vile as she,

Thy gracious lips have told

That mystery of love revealed

At Jacob's well of old.

In spirit, Lord, we've sat with Thee

Beside the springing well

Of life and peace, and heard Thee there

Its healing virtues tell.

Dead to the world, we dream no more

Of earthly pleasures now;

Our deep, divine, unfailing spring

Of grace and glory Thou!

No hope of rest in aught beside,

No beauty, Lord, we see;

And, like Samaria's daughter, seek,

And find our all in Thee.

“Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord, Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die? If we say, we will enter into *the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now, therefore, come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die. And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there. For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life. And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it. Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now, therefore, come, that we may go and tell the king’s household. So they came and called unto the porter of the city: and they told them, saying, We came to the camp of the Syrians, and, behold, there was no man there, neither voice of man, but horses tied, and asses tied, and the tents as they were. And he called the porters; and they told it to the king’s house within. And the king arose in the night, and said unto his servants, I will now show you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we be hungry; therefore are they gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field, saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive, and get into the city. And one of his servants answered and said, Let some take, I pray thee, five of the horses that remain, which are left in the city (behold, they are as all the multitude of Israel that are left in it: behold, I say, they are even as all the multitude of the Israelites that are consumed), and let us send and see. They took, therefore, two chariot horses; and the king sent after the host of the Syrians, saying, Go and see. And they went after them unto Jordan: and, lo, all the way was full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in their haste. And the messengers returned, and told the king. And the people went out, and spoiled the tents of the Syrians. So a measure of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord. And the king appointed the lord on whose hand he leaned to have the charge of the gate: and the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died, as the man of God had said, who spake when the king came down to him. And it came to pass as the man of God had spoken to the king, saying, Two measures of barley for a shekel, and a measure of fine flour for a shekel, shall be tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria: and that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. And so it fell out unto him: for the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died” (2 Kings 7:1-20).

“Salvation is of the Lord.” This is a word uttered by Jonah before the hand of God delivered him from the belly of the great fish, but after Jonah had learned the lesson which the Lord meant to teach him. “Salvation is of the Lord,” that is, it is entirely of God’s grace. It may meet your need, and thanks be to God, it does meet it; but the condition I am in, whether rather higher or rather lower, in no way affects the grace of God; in fact the worse a man is, the fitter he is for salvation, for then he has nothing of his own to rest upon, and cannot deceive himself with the thought that he is better than his neighbors. The king, in this chapter, is a picture of man in his pride and his religion, and the lepers are a picture of man in his filthiness without religion, and God meets both cases. Elisha is a picture of Christ, full of grace and truth; the One who meets man in his guilt, however great that guilt may be.

Samaria—Israel—had departed from God, and as the result of that departure God had brought up the King of Syria and his armies against them, and they thoroughly beleaguered the city of Samaria till the state of famine and destitution passed all description. You can imagine nothing worse than a woman boiling her own son. When God draws a picture, He draws a true picture. Man likes to draw a bright picture and to throw a veil over the dark side; God describes faithfully what man is.

In the king we see a certain measure of looking to God—he wore sackcloth next to his flesh. Sackcloth is in Scripture a well-known symbol of repentance; too proud to let the people know he thought the finger of God was upon him, he put the sackcloth within, not without. He was like many an one now, who has a certain amount of seriousness, but would not like his neighbors to know. He did not like to own his sin, and would willingly have blamed God or His servant, for this state, which was the result of Israel’s sin. Though there might have been religion and formalism, there was evidently no turning of heart to God, in the king, for had there been real repentance, the sackcloth, I believe, would have been worn outside, not in. Moreover, he blames the prophet, and is determined to wreak his vengeance upon him. Man has done worse than that, man has wreaked his vengeance on the One who came to bless, who went about doing good, who healed their sick and raised their dead; Him in their bitter hatred they crucified and slew.

Elisha was a type of Jesus in being a blesser of Israel, and the king in his pride would have taken the prophet’s life, and man in his sin did take the life of Jesus. Did it ever strike you what part you have had in the death of Jesus? I own your voice did not swell those awful cries, “Away with Him, His blood be on us”; but you have a heart that is in sympathy with those who did thus cry; for if you are not yet a child of God you are an enemy of God, for there are but two classes, children of God, and enemies of God. Do you say, I am not an enemy? Are you a friend then? Are you a child? Have you been born again? Have you been quickened by the Spirit? Have you eternal life?

“Oh, no one can know,” you reply. Pardon me, my friend, you are wrong in that, the believer is entitled to know with absolute certainty that he is a child of God: “these things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life.” Another thing we know on divine authority that the friendship of the world is enmity with God. It is impossible to be a friend of the world and a friend of God. “If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him,” John says. God declares we were His enemies, “when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.” Do you own you have been an enemy? “No.” Ah, you little know your own history; look back at it, have you loved Him? “Not as much as I ought.” What an evasive answer! The fact is, people do not like to be brought to this point. For this very reason,

BECAUSE we were enemies, the gospel is preached: it comes out as a message from God to those who are away from God; “we pray you,” Paul says, “in Christ’s stead be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20).

The king, in this chapter, I have said is the picture of an unconverted religious man; there was the external religiousness, but within there was hatred, he wanted the life of Elisha, Elisha who had done only good to Israel, whom the moment before he had called “my father.” Look on farther in man’s history and see; one moment the people are hanging on the lips of Jesus, and the next they take Him to the brow of the hill to cast Him down, and why? Because He had made them know their state, and they could not bear it (Luke 4). People do not like their cone sciences reached. The king was angry, and I am not very sorry when I see people angry at the gospel preaching, it shows that conscience has been touched. But are you an enemy of Christ’s, and do not know it? Has Satan given you some sweet lullaby, whereby you are lulled into false security? Oh! Wake up, wake up; be roused in time; be warned of the terrible danger of remaining one night longer an enemy of God!

Look, I beseech you, at the grace of God. A messenger goes down to Elisha, and the king follows. Why was not the messenger dealt with? Because grace comes in. It is a picture of man in his sin, man in his guilt; man in his hatred, confronted by grace. Now that your evil has reached its full height, now that you have shown your religion is false, and your enmity at its height, now that your sin has reached its culminating point, now God will come in and save you. Grace comes in to meet the desperate need of man’s utter ruin.

Where are you if you are not a child of God? You are a sinner. You may be religious, so was the king, you are a religious sinner. You may be moral, you are a moral sinner. You may be educated, you are an educated sinner. God says to you, “There is nothing in your heart but enmity against me; I know what you are, now let me tell you what I am.” Thus saith the Lord, “Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel in the gate of Samaria.” Grace seizes the moment when hatred has done its very worst, and says, “Now this is the moment of Salvation.” It was at the cross, when man had done his very worst in putting Jesus there, when man’s sin and man’s hatred had reached their height, that was the very moment God chose to reverse everything, God took that moment to reveal His love, and put away man’s guilt. The cross was the place where good and evil, love and hatred, met in mortal combat, and love conquered —love gushes from His pierced side, love for God and His glory, love to the poor sinner in his sinful state, for nothing but His blood could meet that sinful state and put away his guilt. There love triumphed over sin, and hatred, and all the dark enmity of man’s heart.

“Tomorrow.” Those words to the starving inhabitants of Samaria meant salvation, meant a thorough deliverance from their pitiable state. But unbelief always rejects the glad tidings of God. Dire, dark unbelief always throws cold water on the gospel of God; “if the Lord would make windows in heaven might this thing be?” says the nobleman. “Salvation tomorrow? I do not believe it,” says the lord; “you tell me there is full deliverance coming tomorrow, it cannot be; if it were rained down from heaven it might be, in no other way could it be “in the gate of Samaria.” But that is just the point, the whole truth, salvation comes to the very place where you are. And, dear reader, I have better tidings for you than there were that day in Samaria. I preach, not salvation tomorrow, for a shekel of silver, but salvation today, this moment for you, where you now are, salvation without money and without price. “Be it known unto you, that through this man is preached unto you the remission of sins,” for “now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” Salvation through Jesus blood is proclaimed to you now, on the ground that you are a sinner and are lost. He knows your true state, and He offers you salvation now, without money and without price, salvation today, salvation TO’ DAY. From the heart of God comes down the message to you as you are in your sins today, that the sin, the guilt, the debt, and the judgment due to man have been taken by another, paid by another—all the deep debt, and God the Holy Spirit is ready to take possession of the heart that believes God’s message.

But what about the unbeliever? “Behold thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.” These are close dealings, mark them well. Oh, careless, scoffing soul, you who do not know Christ, do not want Christ, do not want to be converted, you may laugh now, you will not laugh in hell, depend upon this there are no scoffers in the lake of fire. It is all very well for you to laugh and have your sport when the evangelist proclaims the gospel, but remember, “Thou shalt see it with thine eyes,” when too late for thee to accept of it. “Son, remember,” oh remember, you, even you shall know it is all true, when you can never have it. Thou shalt hear those sounds of heavenly music inside the gates where thou mayest never enter: music that thou mightest have joined in, but now never may. Thou shalt behold afar off that scene of holy divine joy and bliss of the redeemed, thou shalt see every eye fixed with ineffable joy on Christ, “thou shalt see it,” but afar off, thou thyself being cast out and degraded: cast out forever, “thou shalt see it,” yes, see it, but shall not taste thereof. What a withering sentence! what a terrible sentence!

He who said, “Tomorrow shall a measure of, fine flour be sold for a shekel,” that is, tomorrow shall salvation come to you, also said, “Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.” Each word came true; as the first, so the second. And He who spake as never man spake says, “He that believeth on me shall never hunger,” “He that believeth shall be saved,” says also, “He that believeth not shall be damned.”

I believe the fine flour is typical of Christ, the Bread of life, the Bread of heaven, given for man, Christ given for man’s need. Oh, despise not His grace, slight not His love, risk not the unbeliever’s doom. Oh, risk it not another day, another moment: go to Him, trust Him; let the lepers show you the way. They went out to throw themselves on unknown pity, you have only to throw yourself on the mercy of God, on the compassion of God; they came to the camp of the Syrians, and found everything they needed, and nothing to hinder their taking all they needed. And if you take the place of the lepers, of an empty one, and go to God, though you may have thought God your enemy (as they thought the Syrians their enemies, yet found all they needed, and found none to hinder their taking it too), you will find nothing to hinder your taking salvation and the ample provision God has supplied. You have nothing to do but to take it, and then to turn round and tell others, “there is plenty for you, too,” enough and to spare; there is every, thing I need, and that others need too.

There is nothing that God keeps back from those who trust Him, from those who come forth to His dear Son. Oh, trust Him now, thou shalt find in Him a Savior and a Friend, a helper and a succorer, thou shalt find in Him thine all, for time and for eternity, thou shalt find with me that “salvation is of the Lord.” But oh, if thou art lost through thine unbelief, thou shalt find it is all thine own folly, thou shalt have none to blame for it but thyself. “And so it fell out unto him, for the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died.” He saw it, the food, the salvation for Samaria, but too late; there it was, the unmistakable evidence of the truth of the prophet’s words, but not for him. And so with you, like the poor rich man in Luke 16, you shall be able to see afar off what you despised; I do not say how long or how often you shall see it, but once I say, you will have one long, one fixed look at the salvation of God, that might have been yours but for your own unbelief, “thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not taste thereof.” Oh, my friend, you have despised mercy long enough, despise it no longer; you have turned from Christ long enough, turn to Him now, and receive from His hands the salvation He is so willing to bestow, that He may get the glory, and your soul eternal joy!

There are three points in this chapter, Colossians 1, which I want to bring simply before you; not in the order, however, in which they occur in the passage, because I am not going to instruct advanced Christians, but seek to meet the need of souls who are not fully established in the grace of God.

First, we have Christ, then Christian position, and thirdly, Christian practice. You must begin with Christ. Paul gives thanks when he hears of their faith in Christ Jesus: “We give thanks unto God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints” (Col. 1:3-4). Whenever a person really has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, it comes out in love to the people of the Lord.

Have you faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? May I give thanks to God for you because you have faith in the Lord Jesus? The moment Paul learned that these Colossians had faith in Jesus, he began to give God thanks for them.

Lower down in the chapter you will find the Christ in whom they had faith fully brought out; but here Paul was filled with rejoicing when he learned that there had really been faith in Christ Jesus—that they had turned round from themselves—that they had gone outside themselves entirely, to cling to the blessed One whom God had presented to the sinner as the object of his faith and trust.

What does God want? If there is a person not yet saved, what does God contemplate for that soul? What does He command? To turn to His Son—to receive His Son. For He has sworn by Himself that every knee shall bow to His Son: “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.” Angels, men, and demons, all must bow to Christ. But it is not a question here merely of bowing to Christ, but of the soul of a sinner, conscious of his condition and state as a sinner, turning round to the Lord Jesus Christ, and truly and simply trusting Him as a Savior. These Colossians, though they had been heathen, unbelievers, and ungodly, got tic]• ings about God’s beloved Son. He is presented to them, and they trust Him. This is the first thing that God looks for. It is what He sends out the gospel to produce: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” What God wants is to produce a link of confidence between your soul as a sinner and His Son as a Savior. Now what will produce that? A sight of Himself.

First of all, I would like to find out whom it is that I am called upon to trust. If I want to cross a bridge, I should wish to be sure that it is trustworthy; and if I am to trust a person, I must know him to be trustworthy. You will say to me, You want me to renounce myself thoroughly; to turn from self in every shape and form, and to trust myself simply and solely to Christ. Just so; that is what I want—that is what God wants. But then I must first of all see who it is I am to trust.

CHRIST

Now if you will come down to the middle of the chapter, you will find the One whom God bids you trust. In verse 15 you will find brought out the Person of the One whom God says you are to trust, “who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.” Here I get the glory of the Person of the Lord Jesus. He was a real, true, living man; but He, who is this, is the image of the invisible God—God whom you never saw and never will see. Many people think that they will see God by-and-by when they get to heaven. They are mistaken. “No man hath seen God at any time.” He dwells in “light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, or can see”; and yet by-and-by, when I get up into the glory, I shall see and know this blessed living God. But how? In the Person of His own dear Son. Get hold of this clearly—”He is the image of the invisible God.”

You remember that passage in Job 9 where poor job, when his friends were tormenting him, asks, “How can a man be just with God?” If God were a man, he says, I would go to Him, I would speak with Him; but “He is not a man as I am,” and therefore I am in hopeless darkness because He is not a man, and I cannot understand Him, nor reach up to Him. Job was in bewilderment; what he wanted was something tangible. He says, “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both.” What the sinner requires is one that can reach up to the lofty heights of the claims of God in holiness and righteousness, and come down to the profound depths of man’s ruined and sinful state. This is just what we have in Jesus. “He is the image of the invisible God.”

What is an image? It is not a likeness. An image might be no likeness whatever. Look at the stamp. It has the Queen’s head upon it; it is not a bit like her, but it represents her. An image is that which represents and stands for one who is not in the scene; it gives the idea of representation. “The image of the invisible God” is One who stands for and represents God. The Lord Jesus is the One who comes down to represent God—He is God; and if I want to know the living God, where do I go? I gaze into the face of Jesus; I look at Him in the three-and-thirty years of His wondrous history in this sorrow-stricken and sin-stained world, where He was the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and I say, There is the One who is the image of the invisible God! Do you want to know God? Gaze on Jesus.

In connection with this, will you look at the First Epistle of John—”We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true: and we are in him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:20-21). What were these idols? The old Highland minister said they were little Idols with white dresses and gaily colored cloaks. Nay, it is not a question of an idol down here at all, but of having a thought of God that has not its perfect counterpart in Christ. Where is the true God seen? In the Man Christ Jesus. There are plenty of people who have idols—that is, who have not right thoughts of God. They have notions and thoughts about God for which there is no counterpart in Christ, and such have idols. Christ is the image of the invisible God, and whatever represents God falsely has no counterpart in Christ, and is therefore an idol.

This is a point of great importance; for there are many who, if asked, would say, I am afraid of God. If I were to ask them, “Are you afraid of Jesus?” they would answer, “No; somehow I feel I could trust Jesus—I should not be afraid if the Lord were upon earth—I could go to Him without fear, and I could weep at His feet, as the poor woman did at the Pharisee’s house, and I should love to lean upon His bosom, as John did, but I could not draw near to God.”

A young convert came to me one night when I had been drawing attention to this matter, and said, “I cannot thank you enough for that word. I have been converted and trusting in the Lord for many months, but I had an undefined fear of God. I loved the Lord, and could trust Jesus anywhere; but I had an idea that God was a little different from Christ, and thus I could not feel the same confidence in Him, but I see it now. I have got hold of Christ as the image of the invisible God, and it has made all happy.”

Do you want to know God? Let me take you to the Gospel of Luke (chap. vii.), and let us look for a moment at that poor woman who was about to bury her only son, and she, too, a widow—a pitiable sight any day, but how much more pitiable now that her only son is to be buried. The Lord says, “Stop.” He tells her not to weep. He says to the young man, “Arise”; and the dead man arose, and He delivered him to his mother. Now you will say, That was a very tender-hearted, gracious, compassionate man, who felt for the poor widow in her sorrow; and so indeed it was, but it was much more. That tender, compassionate man was a blessed, perfect expression of what God is in the very springs of His nature. You have a wrong thought of God if Jesus in His life and death does not fully portray Him to your soul. He is the image of God; and if I can trust Jesus, I can trust God.

Who was it that wept at the grave of Lazarus? A tender, compassionate man, who was the expression of God’s own heart. Did He not weep in sympathy with the sisters at that grave? Most surely! He sighed in communion with God as He viewed the ravages sin had wrought, and wept in sympathy with the sorrowing sisters. Blessed Jesus! Such a heart as He had! “Never man spake like this man,” said the officers of the Pharisees; and while fully endorsing this, we can surely exclaim, “Never man loved like this man!” I go to Him as a man, and I read in Him the very nature of God.

There is in Christ, so to speak, this double life, perfection of manhood before God, and all that God is in the grace of His heart, and in His holiness too, revealed before man. All that God is in the very essence of His nature is expressed in the words, the sighs, the tears, in every movement of the Man Christ Jesus. Therefore when Amos says, “Prepare to meet thy God,” I reply, “I shall be delighted to do so. I shall meet Him, I shall see Him in the form of Him who is the sinner’s Friend—the sinner’s Savior.” Would you be afraid to trust Him? Though covered with the guilt of ten thousand souls, there is love enough in Him to meet it all, and value enough in His blood to put it all away.

But let us look at our chapter a little further. Not only is Jesus “the image of the invisible God,” but He is the “firstborn of all creation.” How is He the firstborn? “For by him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him and for him. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Col. 1:16-17). It is perfectly clear He was not second then. People are disposed to say that He must be inferior to God because He became man. But no: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Go back to the beginning, to creation, and there He was. There was the One who began, and by whom all was made.

People often speak about God the Father as the Creator, but in Scripture creation is always referred to Christ. But why is He called the firstborn of all creation? Because if He came into the scene of creation He must have the first place there. He is the firstborn: not as to time, but as to rank, and station, and dignity. He must have the first place. Won’t you give it Him? If I look towards heaven, He made it; towards earth, He made it. He is the Creator, and more than that, He is the Redeemer. The One who undertakes my redemption is the Creator of heaven and earth. Who is the Man that comes down to redeem? The Creator: He who made all things. He humbles Himself and comes down into the scene He made, that He might glorify God, put away sin, abolish death, burst open the grave, defeat Satan, and bring man back to God. “He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.” But He is a man who has come down to die. I never can say that God died; but that He who died was God, and that He became a man that He might die. But if He becomes a man He must take the place of the firstborn. The firstborn of a family gets the title and property of the family. He is the one on whom the dignity and the glory of the family rest, and itis in this sense that Christ is said to be firstborn. I get Him as a man in this scene, perfectly representing God, and meeting man. Can you trust Him? Have you faith in Him?

Further. “It pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.” And in chapter 2 it is said, “For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” What a wonderful Being! In the Person of that blessed Man dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. I have God thus manifested in human form, at the same time that I get the perfect expression of what a man ought to be for God. If you trace Him from Bethlehem, where He came in, on to Bethany where He went out, what strikes one? If you look at His life, you will see that it is one sweet savor to God from His birth to His death; and one beautiful, shining stream of perfection, and grace, and beauty towards man, so that God was obliged from time to time to open the heavens and to say, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” When your heart delights in your child, you delight to speak about it, even to others.

The Lord Jesus was One whose whole heart was towards God. He sets His face as a flint. “Lo, I come,” He says, “to do Thy will, O God”; and again in John 4, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” And in John 17, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”; and in chap. 19, on the cross He says, “It is finished,” that we may hear it, and that we may know that the work has been done which sets our souls free before God. Is He not worthy of your confidence? Is He not the One on whom your soul can repose in the greatest gladness? Oh to be loved by this wondrous Being, this God-man—this man who is the expression of all that God is—God manifest in human form, and One who has glorified God even unto death! This is the love I rejoice in, the love of this precious One. If you have been a halting, hesitating sinner up to this point, do you not think that you can perfectly trust the Lord Jesus now? I see that it is God revealed in a real living man that I am to trust.

But not only is He “the firstborn of all creation,” He is also “the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.” And now He has gone up to God’s right hand as One who can never die. Every one I love down here—those whom most I love—may die; death shoots its arrows relentlessly at those whom most I love, making a target for its shafts of the nearest and the dearest. How sweet and blessed, then, it is to hear the Apostle John say, “He laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last; I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of death and of hades” (Rev. 1:17-18). What then can I say? I may let the tendrils of my heart go out and twine around Him now, because there is no fear of those gentle cords being rudely snapped. Jesus is One who can never die now; He is alive for evermore. Here is One you may love without a bit of suspicion, without a bit of fear of your heart ever being wounded by His being taken from you. You can never be taken from Him, nor can He ever be taken from you.

We have thus seen the One whom God bids us trust; and again I repeat my query, Have you faith in Him? Surely He is worthy of your trust. Perhaps you fear He will not have you. So thought a young man to whom I was speaking after a meeting in London. I inquired, “Are you the Lord’s tonight?” “I should like to be.” “Can you trust Him?” “I think I could.” “Are you willing to be Christ’s?” “I am.” “And is the Lord willing to have you?” “I don’t know; I am not quite sure of that.” “Oh,” I replied, “Christ is thoroughly willing to have you; and if He is willing to have you, and you are willing to have Him, I call that a settled matter. You are in business?” “Yes.” “Well, suppose I come to your warehouse and choose some goods. You fix the prices, and I am willing to buy. I name the quantity and the quality, and you name the figure. The whole thing is settled. What is that?” “I call it mutual agreement.” “And is the bargain settled?” “Oh, yes, I have agreed to sell, and you have agreed to buy. It is mutual agreement.” “Just so,” I went on, “is the way a soul comes to Christ. Christ has agreed to have you and you to have Christ. That is mutual agreement. When the deciding point comes, there is mutual agreement between the Savior and the sinner. The Savior agrees to save, and the sinner agrees to be saved.” “I think I see it clearly now,” he responded, and left me with a bright smile of joy on his face.

If you have never done so hitherto, you must do what the child did. She called her father—”Father!” “Yes, my child.” From the top of the house to the bottom she was calling, “Father, where are you?” She could not see him, as he was in a dark cellar, the only entrance to which was a trapdoor in the floor, which she had never seen before. Standing over its edge, she said, “Father, I want to come to you.” “Well, my child, come.” “But there is no ladder, how am I to come?” “Jump, and I’ll catch you.” “Oh, but, father, I don’t see you.” “But I see you, my child.” Her faith was tried; she hesitated; could she trust him? In a moment more down she goes. Did she fall on the cold cellar floor? Oh, no, but on the bosom that loved her most on earth, and received the warmest kiss and the most tender embrace she had ever had, because she trusted him. Well, now, you have to trust the One you don’t see. Cannot you trust Him now? There He is in all His beauty at God’s right hand, and all you have to do is to trust Him.

“Abraham believed God”; he took God at His word, and “it was counted to him for righteousness.” Faith is taking God at His word. An old lady who was supposed to be dying sent for the one she had been long accustomed to hear preach the Word, and as he considered that she was dying, he thought it but right to ask, “What is your hope for eternity?” She answered through her feeble asthmatical breathing, “Sir-I-have-taken-God-at-His-word.”

It was a grand answer: “I have taken God at His word.” It is no question of how I feel, or what I have experienced or passed through. Many young converts try to decide their standing before God by their feelings and experiences, and hence never have settled peace. Such souls are like children to whom I give a handful of beans. The child sows them, and next morning goes to see whether the beans have sprung up and become scarlet-runners. Not seeing them, she begins to wonder if they are there at all, and to rake and hoe the surface of the earth in order to make sure of it. “Leave them alone, silly child,” I say, “and they will begin to grow in time.” You say you trust Christ; but tomorrow, perhaps, you will begin to rake your heart to see whether you have received Christ, and whether you have the right kind of faith.

The seed is the Word, and the soil in which it is sown is the heart of man. “Leave it alone,” God says. “The kingdom of God is as if a man should cast seed into the ground.” Leave it alone. It gets the dew by night, and the sun by day. And what comes? “First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” Don’t be looking at the surface of your heart and at your feelings, but take God at His word. I took God at His word fifteen years ago, and He is as true today as He was then. You may ask me, “Have you not been a poor, feeble, faltering child since then?” “Yes, alas! I have.” “Has not God been disappointed in you?” “No.” “How is that?” “Because He knew I was good for nothing when He took me up.” The question of worthiness was settled on the spot. Who was the worthy one? Christ. Am I then to give thanks to God for you today that you really trust Christ? If you really do trust Him, if your soul is settled, we can look a little at—

CHRISTIAN POSITION

Let me show you what it is to be a Christian. Look at Colossians 1:12—”Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” The moment you have faith in God’s Son, you are fit to be with Him. The work of Christ alone makes us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. And who are the saints? Are you a saint? “Oh, no, sir.” Why not? “Why, a saint is a very holy person.” A saint is one who has been set apart to God by the work of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit. But, you will say, there must be sanctification. What does being sanctified mean? Separated to God. There is nothing so simple as sanctification as it is given us in Scripture. If you call practical holiness sanctification, it follows justification. But there is a sanctification which comes before it—”Such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” So that really, viewed in one aspect, a man is sanctified before he is justified.

Some will be saying, “This is not right doctrine.” But look at 2 Thessalonians 2:13—“We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” This is the divine and human side of the effect—namely, of God’s having chosen you to salvation. It is not a question of you “brethren, who love the Lord,” but of “brethren beloved of the Lord.” “God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation.” Now you will say, “There is election coming in—that dreadful thing election. You don’t believe that Christ died for all?” Indeed I do, because God says so. “Then what is election?” It is a family secret, and you must be in the family of God to understand it.

Suppose I were going up to a gate, and I find written upon the gate, “Whosoever will may enter in.” I say “That’s free enough: I’ll go inside.” “But how do you know that it means you?” It says “whosoever”; that means me, and anybody. I touch the door, it flies open; I enter, the door closes, and on the inside of it I see written there, “Whosoever gets inside this door never gets out.” Now, election secures this. God takes good care that the soul who believes His word never shall be lost. “God hath chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” The two things, sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth, are inseparable; where one is the other must be. Look at God’s Word. “He has chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit AND belief of the truth.”

Supposing, three weeks ago, a sinner—we will say some young woman—has been awakened by the preaching of the Word and has gone back to her home. She has no longer any taste for the world. She is miserable. Her friends can’t understand the change, nor can she, for she has no joy or peace: only the sense of sin and longings Godward. The Spirit of God quickened her three weeks ago, and separated her to God. Perhaps, through reading Scripture, she gets hold of the truth, believes in Jesus, and the truth sets her free. The Spirit works, the soul is quickened, sanctified, believes, so that of it it can be said, “God hath chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.”

Our meetness for glory is the work that Christ has done for us, and which fits us for the presence of God. Hence it is written in Heb. 2:11—“Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.” (In passing, let me say that I earnestly hope that every one of you would be thoroughly ashamed to call Him “Brother.” Never call the Lord Jesus an “Elder Brother.” It is most irreverent, though He may in His grace call us brethren.) He has finished redemption completely. He has done the work that puts our sin away, and He says, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” He tells Mary Magdalene, “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father.” She comes to Thomas and says to him, “The Lord bids me come and say that you are his brother.” Thomas says, “I don’t believe it.” But afterward he does believe it; and the moment he finds himself in the presence of Jesus, what does he do? He bows down and says, “My Lord and my God!” Ah, Thomas, you are right, and we all may learn from you in this respect.

God has set us in His own presence, and “made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” But there are the two sides of sanctification. There is the doctrinal side; but there is also the progressive or the practical side. When a soul has received the Lord Jesus Christ, there ought to be progress practically; but first of all I get my position, and I must regulate my behavior by the relationship in which I stand. For instance, I don’t behave to you as your child would. Why? Simply because I am not your child. I must know that I am a child of God before I can walk like a child of God.

Now, then, having received Christ, you are fit for glory. What next? “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Col. 1:13). We used to be Satan’s slaves, kept in the dark, but now we are translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. We are in the place where Christ rules and reigns, delivered out of Satan’s kingdom altogether. I am entitled to know that I have a new place before God, delivered from darkness, and brought into His light. “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (vs. 14). We know that we are redeemed, and we know that we are forgiven. There is no doubt about it at all. Mark these five points: We are “made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light”—for the light in which God dwells. Secondly, we are delivered from the power of darkness. Thirdly, we are in the kingdom of the Son of His love. Fourthly, we are redeemed through His blood. Fifthly, we have the forgiveness of sins.

Perhaps you will say next Sunday, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” In the forgiveness of whose sins? Not of everybody’s, for that would not be true. In the forgiveness of Paul’s or Peter’s sins? That would not do any good. Do you believe your sins are forgiven? “No, I could not be sure of that.” It comes to this, then: you believe in “the possibility of the forgiveness of sins.” But I believe that my sins are forgiven. That is what faith does. I believe I am forgiven through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

At this point Paul stops, and says, as it were. I cannot tell you more about the blessing. But I must tell you about the Person who has brought the blessing in. You are redeemed out of bondage, and now I should like you to know more about the Person of the One who has redeemed you. He is the image of the invisible God. All fullness was pleased in Him to dwell. You are made meet for heaven. You are delivered from darkness. You are translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. You are redeemed, you are forgiven. Yet there is even more than this. Peace is made through the blood of His cross. What is peace? It is the complete settlement of every question between the soul and God through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only have I committed sins, but I have a sinful nature. It too has been condemned in the cross of Christ. He has made peace by the blood of His cross.

Sixthly, then, you have peace with God; and seventhly, you are reconciled. “You that were some time alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight” (vs. 21, 22). That is how it all comes —through the death of Jesus clearing away my sins, and I may say, myself too; and He is going to present us holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His sight.

But now comes a terrible word. “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled.” I ask you, Do you mean to continue in the faith, or do you mean to give Christ up and go back to the world? “Of course not,” you will say. I do get “ifs” and “buts” sometimes in Scripture, and they are wholesome landmarks. If I see a man going on with the world, I say, That ends in death; and if I walk after the flesh I shall die. God’s Word is very plain about this. “If ye walk after the flesh ye shall die”; and I take that in its strongest meaning—ye shall be eternally lost—not spiritual death, nor death of the body, but that death is the end of walking in the flesh; that is, the end of that road is the lake of fire; and the end of the other road is the presence of God. “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye have heard,” He presents you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in His sight.

What a new place to be set in! How has it come in? Through death. Christian position means a man being in Christ. It is the butterfly-state, if I may be allowed the expression. What was the caterpillar-state? Is it the state that man was in, in the flesh? What then does the chrysalis-state set forth? Death. I accept the sentence of death that lies upon me, and the truth that I am dead with Christ. But what now? The warmth of summer comes; the chrysalis breaks its shell, and out comes the butterfly. That is Christianity. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” You could not tell in looking at the butterfly and the caterpillar that they are the same being. The caterpillar was a groveling creature, a constant marauder; the butterfly has a different life, a different nature altogether. “You that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works.” There is the caterpillar. There is man in the flesh; an enemy to God by wicked works.

There are three kinds of works spoken of in Scripture, “wicked works” (vs. 21), “dead works” (Heb. 9:14), and “good works” (vs. 10). Wicked works are those of the lost, careless man. But supposing he turns away from wicked works to do religious works, these are what are called in Scripture “dead works.” Which do you think the better? I know that “dead works” or religious works are better in man’s sight, but neither are the fruit of the Spirit, nor have they any connection with Christ. The believer’s instruction is, “that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works.” For my own part, I don’t believe in a person’s Christianity unless there is, after conversion, a great change in his life.

CHRISTIAN PRACTICE.

We get the new practice of a Christian if we go back now to Colossians 1: 9, “That ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” As a believer, it is your privilege to know and to do the will of God. Christ Himself came to do the will of God, and you are filled with the knowledge of all that He desires. “Filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” You have a sense of what suits the Lord. You have His mind. You have learned the meaning of Ecclesiastes 10:9-10. “He that cleaveth wood shall be endangered thereby. If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength; but wisdom is profitable to direct.” Or you are like the two hundred men of Issachar. Of them we read, “And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chron. 12:32). You get the mind of the Lord, and you have to walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing—pleasing the One who has delivered you. The new nature delights in this. I confess that I do like to do what I like. How is this? Because I like to do what the Lord wants me to do. The new creature delights in the will of God. But perhaps you will say, “You will put him under law, won’t you?” No; for the old man was regulated or bound by no law, and the new man requires no law to bind him, because he is a divinely regulated being, a new creature in Christ Jesus. People are fond of being under the law, because it speaks of themselves, and occupies them with themselves. The gospel is all about Christ from first to last.

The Christian life is the reproduction of Christ down here, but you must begin at God’s end. It makes all the difference which end of a telescope you look through. If you look in at the big end of a telescope, do you think you will see anything there? I know what you will see —yourself. And if people look at their own experience and feelings, it will do them no good; but if they looked at Christ, they would bring forth fruit to Him. “Being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God” (vs. 10); day by day your soul enlarging in its capacity to enjoy God. I don’t understand a Christian not full of joy, but going about with his head bowed down like a bulrush. There may be false professors, and they ought to be miserable, but this only proves what I say.

Supposing we get a bad bank-note, it is but the witness that there are a great many good notes. If you by grace have turned to the Lord, be the real thing, “walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.” Now I want to give you a golden rule. You often want to know whether you can go here or there. A friend asks you to go with him somewhere. You are not sure whether it would be right. Whatever you do, don’t go and ask a good person if he would go, but go and ask the Lord if He would go. Would you not like to please the one you love best? And whom do you love best now? Jesus. Then the answer is very simple. Will it please Him? If it won’t please Him, it won’t please me.

“Strengthened with all might according to His glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness” (vs. 11). God will strengthen us, poor, weak, feeble ones as we are, to all patience; and that is what we all need. We are oftentimes weary, the road seems long, and we need patience. You are never to be impatient. You may say, I have a bad temper, and can’t help it. The Lord is the great One, the only One to cure bad tempers. Christ never had one, and the Christian is to live Christ, to follow Christ. Some, times, instead of being strengthened to longsuffering with joyfulness, we are apt to be short-suffering with grumbling. Amid all the trials of earth, a Christian should be like the lark, or like the cock-robin in a storm. Many Christians are like the hen in a storm; and we all know what a hen in a storm is. She is overwhelmed by it. We are not to be like a duck, indifferent to the storm; nor like the hen, alarmed and upset by it; hut like the robin, who feels it keenly, but sings his sweet song in the midst of it.

What, then, is the position of the Christian? Meet for glory, delivered from the power of darkness, translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love, redeemed, forgiven, at peace with God, reconciled, and about shortly to be presented before Him. If you knew that you were going to be presented at court, you would say, “I should like to be all fit and ready.” And you cannot tell the moment when you are going to be presented, not at an earthly court, but into the very presence of the King of glory in the courts of heaven.

Meanwhile you will be strengthened by His might to all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness. Thus we shall be above the trials of the way. There will be many pin-pricks—domestic, business, and ecclesiastical ones. You may get many pin-pricks from your brethren, and even from the sisters too, but Christ’s power sustains the soul above all. We have to live where the Lord sets us down, and to suffer there, and to go through it all the expression of joy in Himself.

May the Lord strengthen us, by His Spirit which dwells in us, to live a little like Him here, till caught up to be fully like Him there!

Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.