Father! in Thy eternal power,
Thy grace and majesty divine,
No soul, in this weak, mortal hour,
Can grasp the glory that is Thine.
E’en in the thoughts of sovereign grace
It leaves us far, far behind;
The love that gives with Christ a place
Surpasses our poor, feeble mind.
The prodigal afar off from his father asks to be made as one of his hired servants. When he comes into his father’s presence, there is no such word. Before he was only thinking of what he was to his father and not what his father was to him.
Remark here . . . one thing most beautiful to observe (Ex. 33-34). God, after threatening to consume them (His people), had said (ch. 33:3), “I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiff-necked people.” Yet Moses says in chapter 34:9, “If now I have found grace in Thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray Thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people.” Grace had come in in the interval; God’s goodness had passed before him. This changed all, and the people being so stiffnecked, Moses says, We cannot do without God. . . . The moment grace is brought in . . . we feel that our very sinfulness is a reason why the presence of God cannot be dispensed with.
People think it humility to doubt God’s grace. It is no such thing. It is thinking your own thoughts when God has spoken. . . . True lowliness is to accept God’s thought. We have no business to think when God has spoken; our business is to believe.
The Lord intercedes for us without our even asking. We do not gain Him to intercede for us because of our repentance or prayers. He did not intercede for Peter when he repented, but before he sinned. He interceded for Peter because he needed it. “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” . . . It is the exercise of grace in His own heart towards us to restore our souls.
“There came a cloud, and overshadowed them” (Luke 9:3434While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud. (Luke 9:34)). . . . It was the divine presence. . . . The fact was that coming into the cloud was coming into the presence of the Father, now a dwelling-place for us. It was thence the Father’s voice was heard, “This is My beloved Son.” . . . He brought them to the Father, the only place into which redemption brings us. . . . Until a man . . . is brought into His presence, he can never know the Father’s love, but when there, he can never know the end of it. It is the kind of love the prodigal never knew till he was in his father’s arms.
The heart finds itself infinitely and everlastingly a debtor to the continual fountain of all grace.
If He uses me, it is a great honor; if He lays me by because self was elated, it is a great mercy. He is saying, as it were, Be satisfied with Myself; be content to know I love you. Are you content with His love? The secret of all service is the due appreciation of the Master’s grace.
T