By A.W. Tozer
Now I do not think that Satan much cares to destroy us Christians physically.
The soldier dead in battle who died performing some deed of heroism is not a great loss to the army but may rather be an object of pride to his country. On the other hand the soldier who cannot or will not fight but runs away at the sound of the first enemy gun is a shame to his family and a disgrace to his nation. So a Christian who dies in the faith represents no irreparable loss to the forces of righteousness on earth and certainly no victory for the devil.
But when whole regiments of professed believers are too timid to fight and too smug to be ashamed, surely it must bring an astringent smile to the face of the enemy; and it should bring a blush to the cheeks of the whole Church of Christ. The devil's master strategy for us Christians then is not to kill us physically (though there may be some special situations where physical death fits into his plan better), but to destroy our power to wage spiritual warfare. And how well he has succeeded. The average Christian these days is a harmless enough thing. God knows.
He is a child wearing with considerable self-consciousness the harness of the warrior; he is a sick eaglet that can never mount up with wings; he is a spent pilgrim who has given up the journey and sits with a waxy smile trying to get what pleasure he can from sniffing the wilted flowers he has plucked by the way. Such as these have been reached. Satan has gotten to them early.
By means of false teaching or inadequate teaching, or the huge discouragement that comes from the example of a decadent church, he has succeeded in weakening their resolution, neutralizing their convictions and taming their original urge to do exploits; now they are little more than statistics that contribute financially to the upkeep of the religious institution.
And how many a pastor is content to act as a patient, smiling curator of a church full (or a quarter full) of such blessed spiritual museum pieces.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article5140.shtml
Saturday, June 26, 2010
An "Unpopular" Prophetic Promise of Apostasy
By Bob Hoekstra
Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. (1 Timothy 4:1-2)
As we continue to alternate between "precious promises" and "unpopular" promises, we come to a prophetic promise of apostasy. Among those who are actually drifting into apostasy, this promise is certainly "unpopular." Additionally, in a church world that wrongly accepts what sounds positive and rejects what sounds negative (instead of rejecting error and accepting truth), this promise is often met with disinterest or, worse, disdain.
"The faith" is the message of the word of God. It is the divine truth in which we are to place our faith, our trust. It especially includes the good news of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our present promise forewarns that there will be those who fall away from "the faith" as the days press closer and closer to the end of the church era. "In latter times some will depart from the faith." Since this is a departure, they seemed to adhere to the word of God for a season. Then, they turned away from it. If they remain active in the church world, their message will no longer reflect the true content of the scriptures. Peter gave a similar warning. "There were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them" (2 Peter 2:1). As sure as Israel had false prophets, the church would have false teachers.
Paul provided some insights into their path of apostasy. They would be " giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons." Their errors would result from paying attention to concepts that were perpetrated by demonic deception. The devil and his army of evil spirits are intent on confusing and distorting the teaching of the word of God. Typically, such errors feed man's fleshly desires to glorify self.
These apostates would also be "speaking lies in hypocrisy." Not only would their teaching be erroneous, their lives would be marked by falsehoods related to pretense. They would add untrue testimony to their inaccurate message. Perhaps, the reports of their ministerial prowess would be grossly exaggerated.
They would also be "having their own conscience seared with a hot iron." They would teach errors and live lies until their consciences were no longer convicted of sin. Be forewarned. Such apostates undoubtedly abound in these last days.
Lord God of truth, thank You for lovingly warning me of the danger of apostasy. Enlarge my appreciation of such "unpopular" promises. Please help me to cherish the truth of Your word. Give me a heart to know Your word. Sharpen my discernment concerning error. Keep my heart and my message anchored in the truth of scripture, Amen.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article10441.shtml
Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. (1 Timothy 4:1-2)
As we continue to alternate between "precious promises" and "unpopular" promises, we come to a prophetic promise of apostasy. Among those who are actually drifting into apostasy, this promise is certainly "unpopular." Additionally, in a church world that wrongly accepts what sounds positive and rejects what sounds negative (instead of rejecting error and accepting truth), this promise is often met with disinterest or, worse, disdain.
"The faith" is the message of the word of God. It is the divine truth in which we are to place our faith, our trust. It especially includes the good news of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our present promise forewarns that there will be those who fall away from "the faith" as the days press closer and closer to the end of the church era. "In latter times some will depart from the faith." Since this is a departure, they seemed to adhere to the word of God for a season. Then, they turned away from it. If they remain active in the church world, their message will no longer reflect the true content of the scriptures. Peter gave a similar warning. "There were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them" (2 Peter 2:1). As sure as Israel had false prophets, the church would have false teachers.
Paul provided some insights into their path of apostasy. They would be " giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons." Their errors would result from paying attention to concepts that were perpetrated by demonic deception. The devil and his army of evil spirits are intent on confusing and distorting the teaching of the word of God. Typically, such errors feed man's fleshly desires to glorify self.
These apostates would also be "speaking lies in hypocrisy." Not only would their teaching be erroneous, their lives would be marked by falsehoods related to pretense. They would add untrue testimony to their inaccurate message. Perhaps, the reports of their ministerial prowess would be grossly exaggerated.
They would also be "having their own conscience seared with a hot iron." They would teach errors and live lies until their consciences were no longer convicted of sin. Be forewarned. Such apostates undoubtedly abound in these last days.
Lord God of truth, thank You for lovingly warning me of the danger of apostasy. Enlarge my appreciation of such "unpopular" promises. Please help me to cherish the truth of Your word. Give me a heart to know Your word. Sharpen my discernment concerning error. Keep my heart and my message anchored in the truth of scripture, Amen.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article10441.shtml
To obey is better than sacrifice
By A.B. Simpson
0ur healing is represented as a special recompense for obedience. If, therefore, we would please the Lord and have the reward of those who please Him, there is no service so acceptable to Him as our praise. Let us ever meet Him with a glad and thankful heart, and He will reflect it back in the radiance of our countenance and the buoyant life and springing health which are but the echo of a joyful heart. Further, thankfulness is the best preparation for faith.
Trust grows spontaneously in the praiseful heart. Thankfulness takes the sunny side of the street and looks at the bright side of God, and it is only thus that we can ever trust Him. Unbelief looks at our troubles and, of course, they seem like mountains, and faith is discouraged by the prospect. A thankful disposition will always find some cause for cheer and a gloomy one will find a cloud in the brightest sky and a fly in the sweetest ointment. Let us cultivate a spirit of cheerfulness, and we shall find so much in God and in our lives to encourage us that we shall have no room for doubt or fear.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4566.shtml
0ur healing is represented as a special recompense for obedience. If, therefore, we would please the Lord and have the reward of those who please Him, there is no service so acceptable to Him as our praise. Let us ever meet Him with a glad and thankful heart, and He will reflect it back in the radiance of our countenance and the buoyant life and springing health which are but the echo of a joyful heart. Further, thankfulness is the best preparation for faith.
Trust grows spontaneously in the praiseful heart. Thankfulness takes the sunny side of the street and looks at the bright side of God, and it is only thus that we can ever trust Him. Unbelief looks at our troubles and, of course, they seem like mountains, and faith is discouraged by the prospect. A thankful disposition will always find some cause for cheer and a gloomy one will find a cloud in the brightest sky and a fly in the sweetest ointment. Let us cultivate a spirit of cheerfulness, and we shall find so much in God and in our lives to encourage us that we shall have no room for doubt or fear.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4566.shtml
The Doomed City
By John MacDuff
"Ungrateful sinner! on your future rests
A sadder heritage of guilt and shame,
Who with abounding gospel mercies blest
Dare spurn the Savior's grace and scorn His Name;
Forget not, though His patience now endures,
The heathen's hell will be a heaven to yours!"
"And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you."-Matthew 11:23, 24.
While following, in the preceding chapters, the Savior's footsteps on Gennesaret, with no name or spot, in all the favored region, have we been more familiar than with Capernaum. His ever memorable sojourn within its walls, is now, however, speedily to terminate. Along with other Hebrew Pilgrims, He is about to proceed to the City of solemnities (Jerusalem), in order to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles.
But before He leaves its gates, He must utter in its hearing a solemn warning-a dreadful denunciation, over unrequited love and guilty impenitence. He looks down the vista of ages to that solemn day when cities and their inhabitants shall throng the area of the Great Tribunal, and when He who holds the balances in His hand will deal out, with unerring equity, to each and all, their respective sentences.
It is not often that Jesus-the meek, and gentle, and tender Savior-speaks in accents of stern wrath and upbraiding; we may well believe He never uttered one needlessly harsh word. When we behold Him, therefore, as the Minister of Justice, standing with the flaming sword in His hand, proclaiming "terrible things in righteousness"-"he that has an ear to hear, let him hear!"
We have these three points brought before us for consideration in this solemn address of our Lord-
I. Capernaum's Privileges.
II. Capernaum's Neglect.
III. Capernaum's Doom.
I. Capernaum's PRIVILEGES
"And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies?" We reject the interpretation put upon this clause by some of the older writers, that it has reference to the worldly prosperity of the city as the great seaport of Gennesaret; still more, another, that the allusion is to its elevated natural site. It is, undoubtedly, in a spiritual sense Christ speaks. His reference is to Capernaum's exaltation in unprecedented and unparalleled religious privilege.
Of all the cities in Palestine, none was in this respect more exalted (nay, so exalted) as this town of Galilee. Bethlehem was "exalted" as the scene of the Manger, and of the Seraphim who sang the advent-hymn of the Prince of Peace. Nazareth was "exalted" as the home of His youth: imagination loves to watch in this little city, nestling amid its picturesque hills, the unfoldings of that wondrous Humanity-to follow Him as He climbed in mysterious boyhood these sunny slopes, or toiled in the lowly workshop of His reputed father. Jerusalem was "exalted" as the scene of more thrilling and majestic events. It witnessed the awful termination of the drama of love and suffering-the Agony; the Cross; the Grave; the Resurrection.
But if we would select the most instructive chapter in the Great Biography-that which contains the most thorough manifestation of the life of Jesus, we must seek it in Capernaum-we must linger in its streets, or frequent the mountain slopes, which looked down on its busy waters. It is spoken of emphatically, with reference to Jesus, as "His own city," the place where He dwelt. For the three most eventful years of His life He made it His home. Either within or outside its gates, miracle followed miracle in rapid succession. Bodily disease; sickness; blindness; palsy; death itself-fled frightened at the presence of the Lord of life; while the very waves which washed its port had been made a pathway for a new display of Power, and murmured their tribute to His Divinity.
Nor was it the WORKS of Jesus alone which this favored city had witnessed. Hundreds on hundreds would echo the later verdict of the soldiers and officers, "Never man SPOKE like this man." The noblest of all His recorded discourses was uttered with Capernaum in view. The rocks, and ravines, and mountain summits around, had listened to Beatitudes of love and mercy for which the world had strained its listening ear for 4000 years. That noble series of Parables, explanatory of the nature of His kingdom, was spoken as He was moored in a fishing boat by its beach. If we cannot even now, read these truthful lessons and words of wisdom without profound emotion, what must it have been to have listened to them, in the living tones of that living voice, and to have gazed on the countenance of the Divine Speaker, "fairer than the children of men?"
And even mightier still than word or deed, sermon or miracle, was, (as we have just noted,) the holy LIFE of this adorable Philanthropist. What a matchless combination of power and gentleness-of majesty and humility! How unlike all human greatness-how unlike all human selfishness! a zeal that never flagged-a love that never faltered-a pity and compassion which sheltered the wretched, the worthless, the abandoned, and those "who had no helper." When His public work was done in the city, He was seen betaking Himself, amid falling twilight shadows, to some neighboring "mountain apart to pray;" or if bodily fatigue demanded rest, no sooner was the cry for support heard, than He was seen hurrying back from His solitude and mountain pillow to afford the needed help.
O favored Capernaum! honored for three long years as the abode of "God manifest in the flesh." How surpassing your privileges! What were the boasted glories of earth's proudest capitals, at that moment, in comparison with this town by the solitary lake of Northern Palestine? What was Rome, with her imperial eagles, looking down from her seven hills, exulting in the sovereignty of the world? What was Athens, or Alexandria, with their schools and systems-their sages and philosophers-looking down from their haughty pinnacles of intellectual triumph on the subject world of Mind? What were these in comparison with the honor enjoyed by that city, within whose honored walls dwelt the Prince of the Kings of the earth-"Christ, the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God?"
In its streets, or on its hill slopes, or amid the chimes of its waves, words of mighty import were first heard, which were destined yet to be borne where the Eagles of Rome had never penetrated. There a mighty balsam was distilled for the wounds of bleeding humanity, which the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato had failed, and ever should fail, to stanch: No wonder, then, that over this His adopted home, His heart should yearn with deepest emotion. His eye wanders first to the further towns, lining these same shores, and which were not unfamiliar with His voice and presence. As He gazes on them with tearful eye, thus He weaves His plaintive lament: "Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." But He has a deeper and sterner plaint reserved for another city-a more solemn and emphatic exclamation: "and you, Capernaum" (I turn now to you, the spot most favored of all, during my earthly pilgrimage), "and you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven!"
Is it a far-fetched comparison, if we see, in the privileges enjoyed by this city of Gennesaret, a reflection of our own? What the region around it proverbially once was among the Hebrews ("a region and shadow of death"), Britain was to the old world; a land of savage barbarism and debasing superstition. But to us, as to them, who once "sat in darkness," light has "sprung up." Cast your eye over the map of the habitable earth, and what the spot, what the nation in its two hemispheres so favored as ours? I speak not of our worldly prosperity-our national glory. I speak not of our enterprise-our science-our arts-our commerce-our institutions. Regarding all these in their place, we have reason for honest pride. But I speak of our spiritual privileges, which may well be prized as a Briton's noblest birthright-the security and conservator of all the rest.
Look to other countries, on which the Sun of heaven smiles more brightly and favorably than on our own, yet cursed and demoralized with horrid rites of impurity and blood-millions bowing to insensate blocks-yearning souls, feeling the void and worthlessness of their own barren systems, longing for some nobler panacea than superstition can give-ten thousand Ethiopians stretching out their unsupported hands to some better God than their idols of silver and gold.
Look at empires nearer home. The saddest of all sad features in many of the nations of Europe is, that God's own truth is not free-that a poor perishing sinner is not permitted to read with his own eyes that precious Word which was intended to be patent as the air of heaven!
Oh, is it no blessing to turn from this sickening tale of a benighted world and a benighted Christendom, and see our own land, with every fetter struck from the limb of thought and action, shining like a spiritual lighthouse-in the midst of the darkening waves? Is it no blessing that we can tell of peaceful Sabbaths, and holy ordinances, and unbound and unforbidden Bibles?-that free as the streams that leap from our mountain ravines are these precious waters of salvation?-that while myriads of heathens are passing into a dark eternity, or pining unsolaced in the bitterness of broken hearts; we can sit by the bedside of the sick, the forlorn, the bereft, the aged, the dying, and from the leaves of this Holy Book, light up the faded countenance with the smile of a foretasted Heaven?
May not He who uttered these words of profound solemnity in the hearing of Capernaum, well look down on this our favored country, and with solemn and significant emphasis echo the exclamation: "And YOU who are exalted to heaven!"
II. Consider Capernaum's NEGLECT. He "upbraided" this city, along with the others, "because it did not repent."
Now it is worthy of note that there is no special or atrocious sin laid to the charge of this lake-city. During all the period of our Savior's residence there, we read of no personal insult its inhabitants offered Him. Nazareth, the town of His childhood and youth, has covered, in this respect, its otherwise hallowed name and memories with everlasting reproach. The furious assault its citizens made on the guiltless and innocent Savior is stated as the reason for His leaving it and coming to dwell in Capernaum. But in His new home we have the record of no such ignominious persecution-no such outburst of personal animosity. On the contrary, He seems there to have been honored and respected. His influence was great; and the most blinded and obdurate could not shut their eyes to the fact that a Great Prophet had arisen in the midst of them. Representatives from all its diverse ranks and offices did him homage; Publicans from their Custom-house; Fishermen from their nets; Leaders of the Jewish synagogue; Officers in Caesar's ranks and drawing Caesar's pay-while the common people heard him gladly.
But what of all this? While there were some (we may hope many) happy exceptions, with the vast multitude there was continued indifference, cold and cheerless neglect; with many more, daring irreligion, and the indulgence of those unblushing vices which, imported from the Roman capital, had been propagated by an abandoned Court. They heard His words, but they practiced them not. They owned him as a Heaven-sent Teacher, but they refused to regulate their lives by His lofty instructions.
In the neighboring city of Tiberias, that imperial Court of Herod was located. This unhappy sovereign was himself the type of hundreds whom the Redeemer had doubtless now in His eye. Herod vaunted no infidelity. On the contrary, he had been the personal friend of John the Baptist. He admired the great preacher's unworldly spirit-his deep and singular earnestness-the novelty and impressiveness of his themes! He invited him to his palace. He listened to his faithful, soul-stirring words-and yet all the while that palace was the scene of shameless profligacy. Herod-this sermon-lover, this Religionist, who could hear the holiest of mere men preach the doctrine of Repentance-was reveling in guilty defiance of the laws of God and man. Patiently he heard John so long as he kept on the great general theme-so long as he allowed him to remain undisturbed in his own wickedness. But when he became a 'Nathan' to him-when the faithful, fearless Forerunner hurled the bolt of rebuke at the soul of his imperial master, and dragged to light his secret lusts, he could tolerate him no longer. Herodias is retained, and John is sent to exile.
So it was with many in Capernaum. They could follow Jesus to the heights of the Mount, and listen to His beatitudes. They could stand for hours on the white sands of the lake as He spoke to them from Simon's vessel all the words of the kingdom; but when He urged the necessity of a daily self-denial-a daily bearing of the cross-they were immediately offended. "This is a hard saying," they said, "who can bear it?" "From that hour they walked no more with Him." This was their condemnation that light (the great Light of Life) came to their city, but they loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
Has Capernaum in this respect no parallel and counterpart in modern times? Alas! alas! Is it not to be feared that now, as then, men are content with having "a name to live," who are spiritually dead. There are thousands who come to our churches, who hear the preacher, who assent to the message, but go back from listening to the tremendous themes of Death, Judgment, and Eternity, to plunge deep as ever into engrossing worldliness and sin. The preacher may be heard-his words may fall like lulling music on the ear, but the gates of the soul are firmly locked and barred against admission-the Baptist may thunder his rebukes, but some Herodias, some heart-sin and life-sin, will, in spite of them, be retained and caressed.
Are there none now reading these words, whom the Savior would begin (as He did with Capernaum) to "upbraid," because they have repented not? When His scrutinizing eye looks down, Sabbath after Sabbath, upon listening audiences throughout our land, all apparently solemn, sincere, outwardly devout, does He not discern, lurking underneath this fair external guise, the signs and symptoms of loathsomeness and decay; like the pure virgin snow covering the charred and blackened ruin, or the emerald sod muffling the volcano. Ah! sermons will not save us-church-going will not save us-orthodoxy in creed and party will not save us. Repent! Repent! is the sharp, shrill call of the Gospel-trumpet. There must be a change of heart-a change of life-a crucifixion of sin-and with full purpose of heart, a cleaving unto the Lord who died for us.
Like Capernaum in our privileges, let us see to it that we be not like Capernaum in our guilt. Better that we had been born among a Pagan-horde-better that we had been kneeling before shapeless idols, votaries of dumb clay, or worshipers of the Great Spirit of the fire or the mountain, than knowing a Savior, and yet rejecting Him-the freeborn citizens of a Christian land, and yet the enslaved possessors of Heathen hearts!
III. We are called to ponder Capernaum's DOOM. "And you, Capernaum, shall be brought down to hell."
That this refers to no mere temporal judgment, is plain from what is immediately added-"It shall be more tolerable," says our Lord, "for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you." Sodom was already destroyed. It was the future judgment of both, therefore, at the great day, to which the reference is made.
No doubt this future and final retribution has had its significant foreshadowing in a temporal overthrow; for nothing in all Palestine (no, not the dilapidated walls of Jerusalem itself) is more striking, than the contrast between Gennesaret as it was, so busy a scene of traffic and life, with what it is now, a spectacle of loneliness and desolation. The very site of the ruins of Capernaum, and its sister towns, is matter of dispute. Jordan, as he rolls past, hurrying his waters to the Asphalt Lake (the Dead Sea), carries the tidings to its submerged cities, that that once "Sea of Life," has become a "Sea of Death," like itself.
But as we have said, we must seek for the full meaning of our Lord's words, not in the grey moldering heaps which strew the shores of that now silent lake, but in a more terrible scene, when from beneath these crumbling stones, buried thousands shall rise at the last summons! It is a solemn and dreadful picture here brought before us. The Angels of Judgment are commissioned to announce them with their trumpets, and to gather in before the tribunal, not solitary individuals, but congregated masses; City is brought to confront City; Capital to confront Capital!
Capernaum is seen to rise from its shroud of ruins! It is the old earthly home of Jesus that is now conducted to the bar of judgement. Let the Witnesses be summoned! Three solemn years, like three venerable forms, come forth from the ancient past. They testify how its streets had been trodden by the footsteps, its shores had echoed to the voice, its arraigned thousands had gazed on the mighty works of Him, who, once the Savior, is now the Judge!
Nor are there lacking individual witnesses to substantiate this testimony. Hear their evidence. One has to aver: 'I was stretched on a couch of sickness "ready to die." He came, and by a word healed me.'
Another-'The foulest of diseases (leprosy) had, from infancy, tortured my frame, banished me from my fellows. He gave the mandate. Returning health thrilled through my veins, and those that had before fled frightened from my presence, beheld in me also a new trophy of His divinity.'
Another has to tell-'My son was trembling on the verge of the grave-a look and a word restored him.' Another-'My only daughter was hushed in that sleep from which human power can effect no awaking. The King of Terrors had torn her from our side. But the Lord of Life entered our dwelling, rolled back the gates of death, and gave us back our loved and lost!'
Material Nature can even be summoned to add weighty testimony. The mountains whose verdant slopes so often listened to His voice-the midnight solitudes which heard His prayers for the impenitent-the grassy meadows where He fed the hungry and compassionated the fainting multitude-the white sands that bore His footsteps-the very waves that rocked themselves asleep at His omnipotent "peace, be still." There is a tongue in every one of them to attest the privileges of the ungrateful city.
And now appears a stranger and more impressive Witness. It is a witness called from the depths of a tremendous sepulcher. Calcified rocks with their riven fronts have borne for ages the significant epitaph of an unexampled overthrow; temple and tower emerge from these abysmal deeps-the hum of a vast City breaks on the ear! It is SODOM, the doomed capital of the Patriarchal age-The "City of the PLAIN" confronts the City of the northern SEA! "Exceedingly wicked sinners against the Lord," what have you to plead?
'Had we enjoyed,' is the reply, 'the privileges of Capernaum, we would have repented long ago, in sackcloth and ashes. Had that voice of majesty and love sounded in our streets as it did in theirs, we "would have remained until this day"-the brimstone cloud would have dissolved-the bolts of living fire would have been undischarged-smiling plains and vineyards would have been where for ages sullen death-waters have rolled-we might have lifted up our faces unabashed in this hour of judgment. Lord! Great Judge! to us much was not given-forbid that from us much should be required!'
What does the Righteous Lord say? 'SODOM! Justice demands retribution for your crimes-your guilt was not without its aggravations-you were not left unsupported and unwarned; the voice and the prayers of the Father of the Faithful ascended for you-a Righteous man testified in your midst from day to day against your unlawful deeds-yet you would not listen; the doom of Earth must be confirmed now! City, you were filthy, be filthy still!'
But YOU, Capernaum! the same Justice demands that far different be YOUR doom! The guilt of Sodom was guilt contracted in the thick darkness of the old world-a few broken beams only struggled through the mists of early day!
But YOU, Capernaum! what city of earth so favored? Your hills were the first gilded by the beams of the Sun of Righteousness-your waters were the first to sparkle under His radiance. It was no earthly prophet or messenger that came and tarried within your walls, summoning you to repentance! Oh, mightier than all preceding Witnesses, your JUDGE Himself must now take the place of deposition, and testify against you! I warned you!-I counseled you!-I lifted up my voice in your streets! Never did I break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax!-I sought to bring forth judgment to victory. But my pleadings of love fell powerless on impenitent souls. You knew Your Lord's will, and did not do it! You were exalted to heaven with privileges-be thrust down to hell for the misimprovement of them! 'Truly I say to you, It is more tolerable for the land of Sodom in this the day of judgment than for you!'
It is the same principle which will regulate the procedure in the Final Day with reference to US. The same great law of unerring equity will be rigidly adhered to-"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded."
Is there one among us who has trampled on unnumbered privileges-the lessons of early piety-followed by a manhood of daring ungodliness, or with whom solemn providential warnings have been guiltily neglected and scorned? What shall the Great Judge say on that Day of just retribution? 'Guilty one! Your doom admits of no mitigation! There is everything to aggravate and nothing to extenuate. I made for years your soul a very Capernaum. I lingered in it, with My footsteps of mercy plying you with every motive and every argument to induce you to hear My voice, and turn at My reproof. I spoke to you in prosperity-by the full cup; but you drank it unacknowledged. I spoke to you in adversity-by desolate hearts and swept chambers; but you received the chastisement in sullen fretfulness, and rushed only deeper into worldliness and sin. See that Outcast by your side! If the mighty works had been done in his case that were done in yours, it might have been far otherwise with him. If he had had your mother's prayers-your paternal counsels-your pastor's warnings-your solemn afflictions, he might have been clothed before now in the sackcloth of repentance. But no penitential tear stole down your cheek-My grace has been resisted-My spirit grieved-My love mocked and scorned. Truly I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for miserable thousands throughout eternity than for you!'
We are obviously taught by all this, that there are to be gradations in future punishment-aggravations of guilt and degrees of suffering. Of what these are to consist, we cannot tell; doubtless among them will be the gnawing rebukes and accusations of memory and conscience, over abused privileges-the bewailing of opportunities and mercies madly thrown away by us.
In that impressive parable of our blessed Lord, describing the condition and experience of the lost, one of the saddest elements in the woe of Dives is unfolded in the reply of Father Abraham-a reply whose echoes will circulate gloomily through the domains of despair-"Son, REMEMBER!" Capernaum, remember! you were the honored home of a Savior you guiltily rejected. Sinner, remember! how that Savior stood and knocked day by day, week by week, at the gates of your soul-remember! How you grieved and scorned Him-remember! that parental prayer, that funeral, that sermon, that lifetime of privilege!
Even on earth, how often do we see how memory and conscience together can light up a hell in embryo! Not far indeed from Capernaum, there was an illustration of this in the case of the imperial tyrant, to whom we have previously alluded. Herod had guiltily connived at the murder of the most innocent of men, and most devoted of ministers. The base deed is consummated. But no sooner is it so, than conscience is roused to its work of retributive vengeance; the image of the slaughtered prophet haunts his thoughts by day, and scares him in dreams by night-Herod the king, soon heard about Jesus, because people everywhere were talking about him. Some were saying, "This must be John the Baptist come back to life again. That is why he can do such miracles." Others thought Jesus was the ancient prophet Elijah. Still others thought he was a prophet like the other great prophets of the past. When Herod heard about Jesus, he said, "John, the man I beheaded, has come back from the dead!"
It is John reanimated to inflict merited retribution on his old destroyer! the stern preacher has come from Sheol! he has been sent from the spirit-world as a minister of vengeance! Conscience sees the grim spectral shadow flit ominously before him, like the fabled ghosts of the murdered-all his power cannot bribe it-all his courage cannot charm it away!
Yes; this is but a foreshadowing of what will terribly aggravate the sufferings and upbraidings of the lost; some foul deed that murdered (worse than the body) the soul of a fellow-creature, will fasten upon the transgressor like the sting of the scorpion, and give him no rest day nor night. The terrible imagery will track his footsteps, and traverse, with terrifying form, his path.
I was a traitor to my child, will be the harrowing thought of one; he might have been in glory but for me! I laid snares for the innocent, will be the self-reproach of another. I sowed the seeds of vice in virtuous hearts; they are now piteously upbraiding me as the author of all their misery! I was the Pastor of a Flock, is the torturing anguish of a third; but I deceived them with a name to live, I neglected to tell them of their danger, and urge them to accept the great remedy, and the voice of my people's blood is crying out against me! We had that Savior in our offer, will be the wild cry of thousands more, but we rejected His love and spurned His grace.
Ah, it is this last which was the crime of the Capernaum sinner, (misimproved privileges), and we fear no guilt will be more general, no reflections more harrowing, than those arising from its consciousness. Yes; be assured nothing will be half so terrible as to be confronted with the charge of abused responsibilities. If he be without sail and rudder, the castaway on the raft could not be blamed for inability to buffet the storm, reach the haven, and save his owner's cargo; but a heavy responsibility would rest on the pilot, who, with fully equipped vessel, a bright sky above, a favoring breeze, and a safe navigation, permitted her to run aground, or be dashed on the rocks.
Not only, in the case of abused privileges, is the responsibility greater, but the ruin is swifter and surer! The very possession of privileges, if these are unimproved, will only lead to a greater hardness and impenitency of heart. The sun, and dews, and rains of heaven, which warm and moisten, and fructify the living blade, or plant, or tree, accelerate the decay and rottenness of the dead one. As by familiarity with sin, its native odiousness is worn away-the first shudder of tender conscience is followed by a duller sense of its turpitude, then the swift downward descent to perdition. So by familiarity with the gospel, the urgency and impressiveness of its messages are diminished; just as the Alpine shepherd can, through habit, sleep undisturbed at the base of the roaring cataract, or the soldier can hear without wincing the thunder of the cannon.
God keep us from the sin and danger of being preachers and hearers, and not doers-having the head enlightened and the soul unsaved-our privileges only forging the heavier fetter, and feeding and fanning the hotter flame!
Awake, my Brother, before it is too late, from your sleep of indifference. God calls on all men, everywhere, to repent. Yours may, until now, have been the guilt of Capernaum; yours its heavy responsibilities; but the Savior has not yet stood at the gates of your heart to utter the last malediction; announcing that you are, through impenitence, finally given over to judicial blindness! While Capernaum still enjoyed the Lord's presence, for the vilest sinner within its walls there was mercy! We entreat you, by the great Day of Judgment-that Day in which Sodom and Capernaum and we shall together meet-to remain no longer as you are.
Do not go down to the grave, with your souls unsaved! Jesus is still lingering on your thresholds. It was the wondrous record of three years of miraculous works and cures in the Galilean city-"He healed them ALL;" and He is still the Physician who heals ALL diseases! Soon it will be too late to rush to His feet; He will have bidden an eternal farewell to the souls that have rejected Him, or death may have put his impressive seal on their hopes of pardon. A few more faint "pulses of quivering light," and your earthly sun will have set forever! The past may be a sad one-you cannot recall it-you cannot revoke or cancel it-it has winged its flight before you to meet you at the Judgment. But the future is yours, and God helping you, the dark and cloudy day may yet have its golden sunset! Up, and with the earnestness of men resolve to flee sin and cleave to the Lord, that that dreadful hour may never arrive, in which your own knell shall thus be rung-"If you, even YOU had known in this your day, the things that belong to your peace, but now they are forever hidden from your eyes."
Can I close these solemn thoughts without a word of incentive and encouragement to God's own people? The text tells us that there are to be different degrees of punishment in a state of woe; but there are other passages in abundance, which teach us the cheering corresponding truth, that there are to be different degrees of bliss in a future heaven. One star is to differ from another star in glory. There are to be rulers over five, and rulers over ten cities-those who are to be in the outskirts of glory, and those basking in the sunlight of the Eternal Throne!-Is this no call on us to be up and doing?-not to be content with the circumference, but to seek nearness to the glorious center-not only to have crowns shining as the brightness of the firmament, but to have a tiara of stars in that crown? It is the degree of holiness now that will decide the degree of happiness then-the transactions of time will regulate the awards of eternity.
And as we have seen that memory will increase and aggravate the wretchedness of the lost, so will the same purified ennobled power intensify the bliss of the saved. Ah! with what joy will they re-traverse life, mark every successfully resisted temptation-every triumph over base passion and sordid self-every sacrifice made for the glory of God and the good of man-every affliction they have meekly borne-every cross they have submissively carried-every kindly unostentatious deed, done from motives of love and gratitude to the Savior. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. The Christian life is action; it is not theory-it is not dreamy thought-sickly sentimentalism. The formula of the great Judge's sentence on the last day to the Righteous is (not "well thought," or "well purposed," but)-"well DONE;" to the Wicked-"Inasmuch as you DID it not."
Fellow sinners, washed by the same blood-fellow pilgrims, traveling to the same eternity-fellow prisoners, who are so soon to stand at the same Great Judgement-are we ready to meet the summons which may sooner than we think startle us in the midst of our neglected privileges?-"Go! Give an account of your stewardship!"
http://articles.ochristian.com/article2890.shtml
"Ungrateful sinner! on your future rests
A sadder heritage of guilt and shame,
Who with abounding gospel mercies blest
Dare spurn the Savior's grace and scorn His Name;
Forget not, though His patience now endures,
The heathen's hell will be a heaven to yours!"
"And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you."-Matthew 11:23, 24.
While following, in the preceding chapters, the Savior's footsteps on Gennesaret, with no name or spot, in all the favored region, have we been more familiar than with Capernaum. His ever memorable sojourn within its walls, is now, however, speedily to terminate. Along with other Hebrew Pilgrims, He is about to proceed to the City of solemnities (Jerusalem), in order to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles.
But before He leaves its gates, He must utter in its hearing a solemn warning-a dreadful denunciation, over unrequited love and guilty impenitence. He looks down the vista of ages to that solemn day when cities and their inhabitants shall throng the area of the Great Tribunal, and when He who holds the balances in His hand will deal out, with unerring equity, to each and all, their respective sentences.
It is not often that Jesus-the meek, and gentle, and tender Savior-speaks in accents of stern wrath and upbraiding; we may well believe He never uttered one needlessly harsh word. When we behold Him, therefore, as the Minister of Justice, standing with the flaming sword in His hand, proclaiming "terrible things in righteousness"-"he that has an ear to hear, let him hear!"
We have these three points brought before us for consideration in this solemn address of our Lord-
I. Capernaum's Privileges.
II. Capernaum's Neglect.
III. Capernaum's Doom.
I. Capernaum's PRIVILEGES
"And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies?" We reject the interpretation put upon this clause by some of the older writers, that it has reference to the worldly prosperity of the city as the great seaport of Gennesaret; still more, another, that the allusion is to its elevated natural site. It is, undoubtedly, in a spiritual sense Christ speaks. His reference is to Capernaum's exaltation in unprecedented and unparalleled religious privilege.
Of all the cities in Palestine, none was in this respect more exalted (nay, so exalted) as this town of Galilee. Bethlehem was "exalted" as the scene of the Manger, and of the Seraphim who sang the advent-hymn of the Prince of Peace. Nazareth was "exalted" as the home of His youth: imagination loves to watch in this little city, nestling amid its picturesque hills, the unfoldings of that wondrous Humanity-to follow Him as He climbed in mysterious boyhood these sunny slopes, or toiled in the lowly workshop of His reputed father. Jerusalem was "exalted" as the scene of more thrilling and majestic events. It witnessed the awful termination of the drama of love and suffering-the Agony; the Cross; the Grave; the Resurrection.
But if we would select the most instructive chapter in the Great Biography-that which contains the most thorough manifestation of the life of Jesus, we must seek it in Capernaum-we must linger in its streets, or frequent the mountain slopes, which looked down on its busy waters. It is spoken of emphatically, with reference to Jesus, as "His own city," the place where He dwelt. For the three most eventful years of His life He made it His home. Either within or outside its gates, miracle followed miracle in rapid succession. Bodily disease; sickness; blindness; palsy; death itself-fled frightened at the presence of the Lord of life; while the very waves which washed its port had been made a pathway for a new display of Power, and murmured their tribute to His Divinity.
Nor was it the WORKS of Jesus alone which this favored city had witnessed. Hundreds on hundreds would echo the later verdict of the soldiers and officers, "Never man SPOKE like this man." The noblest of all His recorded discourses was uttered with Capernaum in view. The rocks, and ravines, and mountain summits around, had listened to Beatitudes of love and mercy for which the world had strained its listening ear for 4000 years. That noble series of Parables, explanatory of the nature of His kingdom, was spoken as He was moored in a fishing boat by its beach. If we cannot even now, read these truthful lessons and words of wisdom without profound emotion, what must it have been to have listened to them, in the living tones of that living voice, and to have gazed on the countenance of the Divine Speaker, "fairer than the children of men?"
And even mightier still than word or deed, sermon or miracle, was, (as we have just noted,) the holy LIFE of this adorable Philanthropist. What a matchless combination of power and gentleness-of majesty and humility! How unlike all human greatness-how unlike all human selfishness! a zeal that never flagged-a love that never faltered-a pity and compassion which sheltered the wretched, the worthless, the abandoned, and those "who had no helper." When His public work was done in the city, He was seen betaking Himself, amid falling twilight shadows, to some neighboring "mountain apart to pray;" or if bodily fatigue demanded rest, no sooner was the cry for support heard, than He was seen hurrying back from His solitude and mountain pillow to afford the needed help.
O favored Capernaum! honored for three long years as the abode of "God manifest in the flesh." How surpassing your privileges! What were the boasted glories of earth's proudest capitals, at that moment, in comparison with this town by the solitary lake of Northern Palestine? What was Rome, with her imperial eagles, looking down from her seven hills, exulting in the sovereignty of the world? What was Athens, or Alexandria, with their schools and systems-their sages and philosophers-looking down from their haughty pinnacles of intellectual triumph on the subject world of Mind? What were these in comparison with the honor enjoyed by that city, within whose honored walls dwelt the Prince of the Kings of the earth-"Christ, the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God?"
In its streets, or on its hill slopes, or amid the chimes of its waves, words of mighty import were first heard, which were destined yet to be borne where the Eagles of Rome had never penetrated. There a mighty balsam was distilled for the wounds of bleeding humanity, which the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato had failed, and ever should fail, to stanch: No wonder, then, that over this His adopted home, His heart should yearn with deepest emotion. His eye wanders first to the further towns, lining these same shores, and which were not unfamiliar with His voice and presence. As He gazes on them with tearful eye, thus He weaves His plaintive lament: "Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." But He has a deeper and sterner plaint reserved for another city-a more solemn and emphatic exclamation: "and you, Capernaum" (I turn now to you, the spot most favored of all, during my earthly pilgrimage), "and you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven!"
Is it a far-fetched comparison, if we see, in the privileges enjoyed by this city of Gennesaret, a reflection of our own? What the region around it proverbially once was among the Hebrews ("a region and shadow of death"), Britain was to the old world; a land of savage barbarism and debasing superstition. But to us, as to them, who once "sat in darkness," light has "sprung up." Cast your eye over the map of the habitable earth, and what the spot, what the nation in its two hemispheres so favored as ours? I speak not of our worldly prosperity-our national glory. I speak not of our enterprise-our science-our arts-our commerce-our institutions. Regarding all these in their place, we have reason for honest pride. But I speak of our spiritual privileges, which may well be prized as a Briton's noblest birthright-the security and conservator of all the rest.
Look to other countries, on which the Sun of heaven smiles more brightly and favorably than on our own, yet cursed and demoralized with horrid rites of impurity and blood-millions bowing to insensate blocks-yearning souls, feeling the void and worthlessness of their own barren systems, longing for some nobler panacea than superstition can give-ten thousand Ethiopians stretching out their unsupported hands to some better God than their idols of silver and gold.
Look at empires nearer home. The saddest of all sad features in many of the nations of Europe is, that God's own truth is not free-that a poor perishing sinner is not permitted to read with his own eyes that precious Word which was intended to be patent as the air of heaven!
Oh, is it no blessing to turn from this sickening tale of a benighted world and a benighted Christendom, and see our own land, with every fetter struck from the limb of thought and action, shining like a spiritual lighthouse-in the midst of the darkening waves? Is it no blessing that we can tell of peaceful Sabbaths, and holy ordinances, and unbound and unforbidden Bibles?-that free as the streams that leap from our mountain ravines are these precious waters of salvation?-that while myriads of heathens are passing into a dark eternity, or pining unsolaced in the bitterness of broken hearts; we can sit by the bedside of the sick, the forlorn, the bereft, the aged, the dying, and from the leaves of this Holy Book, light up the faded countenance with the smile of a foretasted Heaven?
May not He who uttered these words of profound solemnity in the hearing of Capernaum, well look down on this our favored country, and with solemn and significant emphasis echo the exclamation: "And YOU who are exalted to heaven!"
II. Consider Capernaum's NEGLECT. He "upbraided" this city, along with the others, "because it did not repent."
Now it is worthy of note that there is no special or atrocious sin laid to the charge of this lake-city. During all the period of our Savior's residence there, we read of no personal insult its inhabitants offered Him. Nazareth, the town of His childhood and youth, has covered, in this respect, its otherwise hallowed name and memories with everlasting reproach. The furious assault its citizens made on the guiltless and innocent Savior is stated as the reason for His leaving it and coming to dwell in Capernaum. But in His new home we have the record of no such ignominious persecution-no such outburst of personal animosity. On the contrary, He seems there to have been honored and respected. His influence was great; and the most blinded and obdurate could not shut their eyes to the fact that a Great Prophet had arisen in the midst of them. Representatives from all its diverse ranks and offices did him homage; Publicans from their Custom-house; Fishermen from their nets; Leaders of the Jewish synagogue; Officers in Caesar's ranks and drawing Caesar's pay-while the common people heard him gladly.
But what of all this? While there were some (we may hope many) happy exceptions, with the vast multitude there was continued indifference, cold and cheerless neglect; with many more, daring irreligion, and the indulgence of those unblushing vices which, imported from the Roman capital, had been propagated by an abandoned Court. They heard His words, but they practiced them not. They owned him as a Heaven-sent Teacher, but they refused to regulate their lives by His lofty instructions.
In the neighboring city of Tiberias, that imperial Court of Herod was located. This unhappy sovereign was himself the type of hundreds whom the Redeemer had doubtless now in His eye. Herod vaunted no infidelity. On the contrary, he had been the personal friend of John the Baptist. He admired the great preacher's unworldly spirit-his deep and singular earnestness-the novelty and impressiveness of his themes! He invited him to his palace. He listened to his faithful, soul-stirring words-and yet all the while that palace was the scene of shameless profligacy. Herod-this sermon-lover, this Religionist, who could hear the holiest of mere men preach the doctrine of Repentance-was reveling in guilty defiance of the laws of God and man. Patiently he heard John so long as he kept on the great general theme-so long as he allowed him to remain undisturbed in his own wickedness. But when he became a 'Nathan' to him-when the faithful, fearless Forerunner hurled the bolt of rebuke at the soul of his imperial master, and dragged to light his secret lusts, he could tolerate him no longer. Herodias is retained, and John is sent to exile.
So it was with many in Capernaum. They could follow Jesus to the heights of the Mount, and listen to His beatitudes. They could stand for hours on the white sands of the lake as He spoke to them from Simon's vessel all the words of the kingdom; but when He urged the necessity of a daily self-denial-a daily bearing of the cross-they were immediately offended. "This is a hard saying," they said, "who can bear it?" "From that hour they walked no more with Him." This was their condemnation that light (the great Light of Life) came to their city, but they loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
Has Capernaum in this respect no parallel and counterpart in modern times? Alas! alas! Is it not to be feared that now, as then, men are content with having "a name to live," who are spiritually dead. There are thousands who come to our churches, who hear the preacher, who assent to the message, but go back from listening to the tremendous themes of Death, Judgment, and Eternity, to plunge deep as ever into engrossing worldliness and sin. The preacher may be heard-his words may fall like lulling music on the ear, but the gates of the soul are firmly locked and barred against admission-the Baptist may thunder his rebukes, but some Herodias, some heart-sin and life-sin, will, in spite of them, be retained and caressed.
Are there none now reading these words, whom the Savior would begin (as He did with Capernaum) to "upbraid," because they have repented not? When His scrutinizing eye looks down, Sabbath after Sabbath, upon listening audiences throughout our land, all apparently solemn, sincere, outwardly devout, does He not discern, lurking underneath this fair external guise, the signs and symptoms of loathsomeness and decay; like the pure virgin snow covering the charred and blackened ruin, or the emerald sod muffling the volcano. Ah! sermons will not save us-church-going will not save us-orthodoxy in creed and party will not save us. Repent! Repent! is the sharp, shrill call of the Gospel-trumpet. There must be a change of heart-a change of life-a crucifixion of sin-and with full purpose of heart, a cleaving unto the Lord who died for us.
Like Capernaum in our privileges, let us see to it that we be not like Capernaum in our guilt. Better that we had been born among a Pagan-horde-better that we had been kneeling before shapeless idols, votaries of dumb clay, or worshipers of the Great Spirit of the fire or the mountain, than knowing a Savior, and yet rejecting Him-the freeborn citizens of a Christian land, and yet the enslaved possessors of Heathen hearts!
III. We are called to ponder Capernaum's DOOM. "And you, Capernaum, shall be brought down to hell."
That this refers to no mere temporal judgment, is plain from what is immediately added-"It shall be more tolerable," says our Lord, "for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you." Sodom was already destroyed. It was the future judgment of both, therefore, at the great day, to which the reference is made.
No doubt this future and final retribution has had its significant foreshadowing in a temporal overthrow; for nothing in all Palestine (no, not the dilapidated walls of Jerusalem itself) is more striking, than the contrast between Gennesaret as it was, so busy a scene of traffic and life, with what it is now, a spectacle of loneliness and desolation. The very site of the ruins of Capernaum, and its sister towns, is matter of dispute. Jordan, as he rolls past, hurrying his waters to the Asphalt Lake (the Dead Sea), carries the tidings to its submerged cities, that that once "Sea of Life," has become a "Sea of Death," like itself.
But as we have said, we must seek for the full meaning of our Lord's words, not in the grey moldering heaps which strew the shores of that now silent lake, but in a more terrible scene, when from beneath these crumbling stones, buried thousands shall rise at the last summons! It is a solemn and dreadful picture here brought before us. The Angels of Judgment are commissioned to announce them with their trumpets, and to gather in before the tribunal, not solitary individuals, but congregated masses; City is brought to confront City; Capital to confront Capital!
Capernaum is seen to rise from its shroud of ruins! It is the old earthly home of Jesus that is now conducted to the bar of judgement. Let the Witnesses be summoned! Three solemn years, like three venerable forms, come forth from the ancient past. They testify how its streets had been trodden by the footsteps, its shores had echoed to the voice, its arraigned thousands had gazed on the mighty works of Him, who, once the Savior, is now the Judge!
Nor are there lacking individual witnesses to substantiate this testimony. Hear their evidence. One has to aver: 'I was stretched on a couch of sickness "ready to die." He came, and by a word healed me.'
Another-'The foulest of diseases (leprosy) had, from infancy, tortured my frame, banished me from my fellows. He gave the mandate. Returning health thrilled through my veins, and those that had before fled frightened from my presence, beheld in me also a new trophy of His divinity.'
Another has to tell-'My son was trembling on the verge of the grave-a look and a word restored him.' Another-'My only daughter was hushed in that sleep from which human power can effect no awaking. The King of Terrors had torn her from our side. But the Lord of Life entered our dwelling, rolled back the gates of death, and gave us back our loved and lost!'
Material Nature can even be summoned to add weighty testimony. The mountains whose verdant slopes so often listened to His voice-the midnight solitudes which heard His prayers for the impenitent-the grassy meadows where He fed the hungry and compassionated the fainting multitude-the white sands that bore His footsteps-the very waves that rocked themselves asleep at His omnipotent "peace, be still." There is a tongue in every one of them to attest the privileges of the ungrateful city.
And now appears a stranger and more impressive Witness. It is a witness called from the depths of a tremendous sepulcher. Calcified rocks with their riven fronts have borne for ages the significant epitaph of an unexampled overthrow; temple and tower emerge from these abysmal deeps-the hum of a vast City breaks on the ear! It is SODOM, the doomed capital of the Patriarchal age-The "City of the PLAIN" confronts the City of the northern SEA! "Exceedingly wicked sinners against the Lord," what have you to plead?
'Had we enjoyed,' is the reply, 'the privileges of Capernaum, we would have repented long ago, in sackcloth and ashes. Had that voice of majesty and love sounded in our streets as it did in theirs, we "would have remained until this day"-the brimstone cloud would have dissolved-the bolts of living fire would have been undischarged-smiling plains and vineyards would have been where for ages sullen death-waters have rolled-we might have lifted up our faces unabashed in this hour of judgment. Lord! Great Judge! to us much was not given-forbid that from us much should be required!'
What does the Righteous Lord say? 'SODOM! Justice demands retribution for your crimes-your guilt was not without its aggravations-you were not left unsupported and unwarned; the voice and the prayers of the Father of the Faithful ascended for you-a Righteous man testified in your midst from day to day against your unlawful deeds-yet you would not listen; the doom of Earth must be confirmed now! City, you were filthy, be filthy still!'
But YOU, Capernaum! the same Justice demands that far different be YOUR doom! The guilt of Sodom was guilt contracted in the thick darkness of the old world-a few broken beams only struggled through the mists of early day!
But YOU, Capernaum! what city of earth so favored? Your hills were the first gilded by the beams of the Sun of Righteousness-your waters were the first to sparkle under His radiance. It was no earthly prophet or messenger that came and tarried within your walls, summoning you to repentance! Oh, mightier than all preceding Witnesses, your JUDGE Himself must now take the place of deposition, and testify against you! I warned you!-I counseled you!-I lifted up my voice in your streets! Never did I break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax!-I sought to bring forth judgment to victory. But my pleadings of love fell powerless on impenitent souls. You knew Your Lord's will, and did not do it! You were exalted to heaven with privileges-be thrust down to hell for the misimprovement of them! 'Truly I say to you, It is more tolerable for the land of Sodom in this the day of judgment than for you!'
It is the same principle which will regulate the procedure in the Final Day with reference to US. The same great law of unerring equity will be rigidly adhered to-"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded."
Is there one among us who has trampled on unnumbered privileges-the lessons of early piety-followed by a manhood of daring ungodliness, or with whom solemn providential warnings have been guiltily neglected and scorned? What shall the Great Judge say on that Day of just retribution? 'Guilty one! Your doom admits of no mitigation! There is everything to aggravate and nothing to extenuate. I made for years your soul a very Capernaum. I lingered in it, with My footsteps of mercy plying you with every motive and every argument to induce you to hear My voice, and turn at My reproof. I spoke to you in prosperity-by the full cup; but you drank it unacknowledged. I spoke to you in adversity-by desolate hearts and swept chambers; but you received the chastisement in sullen fretfulness, and rushed only deeper into worldliness and sin. See that Outcast by your side! If the mighty works had been done in his case that were done in yours, it might have been far otherwise with him. If he had had your mother's prayers-your paternal counsels-your pastor's warnings-your solemn afflictions, he might have been clothed before now in the sackcloth of repentance. But no penitential tear stole down your cheek-My grace has been resisted-My spirit grieved-My love mocked and scorned. Truly I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for miserable thousands throughout eternity than for you!'
We are obviously taught by all this, that there are to be gradations in future punishment-aggravations of guilt and degrees of suffering. Of what these are to consist, we cannot tell; doubtless among them will be the gnawing rebukes and accusations of memory and conscience, over abused privileges-the bewailing of opportunities and mercies madly thrown away by us.
In that impressive parable of our blessed Lord, describing the condition and experience of the lost, one of the saddest elements in the woe of Dives is unfolded in the reply of Father Abraham-a reply whose echoes will circulate gloomily through the domains of despair-"Son, REMEMBER!" Capernaum, remember! you were the honored home of a Savior you guiltily rejected. Sinner, remember! how that Savior stood and knocked day by day, week by week, at the gates of your soul-remember! How you grieved and scorned Him-remember! that parental prayer, that funeral, that sermon, that lifetime of privilege!
Even on earth, how often do we see how memory and conscience together can light up a hell in embryo! Not far indeed from Capernaum, there was an illustration of this in the case of the imperial tyrant, to whom we have previously alluded. Herod had guiltily connived at the murder of the most innocent of men, and most devoted of ministers. The base deed is consummated. But no sooner is it so, than conscience is roused to its work of retributive vengeance; the image of the slaughtered prophet haunts his thoughts by day, and scares him in dreams by night-Herod the king, soon heard about Jesus, because people everywhere were talking about him. Some were saying, "This must be John the Baptist come back to life again. That is why he can do such miracles." Others thought Jesus was the ancient prophet Elijah. Still others thought he was a prophet like the other great prophets of the past. When Herod heard about Jesus, he said, "John, the man I beheaded, has come back from the dead!"
It is John reanimated to inflict merited retribution on his old destroyer! the stern preacher has come from Sheol! he has been sent from the spirit-world as a minister of vengeance! Conscience sees the grim spectral shadow flit ominously before him, like the fabled ghosts of the murdered-all his power cannot bribe it-all his courage cannot charm it away!
Yes; this is but a foreshadowing of what will terribly aggravate the sufferings and upbraidings of the lost; some foul deed that murdered (worse than the body) the soul of a fellow-creature, will fasten upon the transgressor like the sting of the scorpion, and give him no rest day nor night. The terrible imagery will track his footsteps, and traverse, with terrifying form, his path.
I was a traitor to my child, will be the harrowing thought of one; he might have been in glory but for me! I laid snares for the innocent, will be the self-reproach of another. I sowed the seeds of vice in virtuous hearts; they are now piteously upbraiding me as the author of all their misery! I was the Pastor of a Flock, is the torturing anguish of a third; but I deceived them with a name to live, I neglected to tell them of their danger, and urge them to accept the great remedy, and the voice of my people's blood is crying out against me! We had that Savior in our offer, will be the wild cry of thousands more, but we rejected His love and spurned His grace.
Ah, it is this last which was the crime of the Capernaum sinner, (misimproved privileges), and we fear no guilt will be more general, no reflections more harrowing, than those arising from its consciousness. Yes; be assured nothing will be half so terrible as to be confronted with the charge of abused responsibilities. If he be without sail and rudder, the castaway on the raft could not be blamed for inability to buffet the storm, reach the haven, and save his owner's cargo; but a heavy responsibility would rest on the pilot, who, with fully equipped vessel, a bright sky above, a favoring breeze, and a safe navigation, permitted her to run aground, or be dashed on the rocks.
Not only, in the case of abused privileges, is the responsibility greater, but the ruin is swifter and surer! The very possession of privileges, if these are unimproved, will only lead to a greater hardness and impenitency of heart. The sun, and dews, and rains of heaven, which warm and moisten, and fructify the living blade, or plant, or tree, accelerate the decay and rottenness of the dead one. As by familiarity with sin, its native odiousness is worn away-the first shudder of tender conscience is followed by a duller sense of its turpitude, then the swift downward descent to perdition. So by familiarity with the gospel, the urgency and impressiveness of its messages are diminished; just as the Alpine shepherd can, through habit, sleep undisturbed at the base of the roaring cataract, or the soldier can hear without wincing the thunder of the cannon.
God keep us from the sin and danger of being preachers and hearers, and not doers-having the head enlightened and the soul unsaved-our privileges only forging the heavier fetter, and feeding and fanning the hotter flame!
Awake, my Brother, before it is too late, from your sleep of indifference. God calls on all men, everywhere, to repent. Yours may, until now, have been the guilt of Capernaum; yours its heavy responsibilities; but the Savior has not yet stood at the gates of your heart to utter the last malediction; announcing that you are, through impenitence, finally given over to judicial blindness! While Capernaum still enjoyed the Lord's presence, for the vilest sinner within its walls there was mercy! We entreat you, by the great Day of Judgment-that Day in which Sodom and Capernaum and we shall together meet-to remain no longer as you are.
Do not go down to the grave, with your souls unsaved! Jesus is still lingering on your thresholds. It was the wondrous record of three years of miraculous works and cures in the Galilean city-"He healed them ALL;" and He is still the Physician who heals ALL diseases! Soon it will be too late to rush to His feet; He will have bidden an eternal farewell to the souls that have rejected Him, or death may have put his impressive seal on their hopes of pardon. A few more faint "pulses of quivering light," and your earthly sun will have set forever! The past may be a sad one-you cannot recall it-you cannot revoke or cancel it-it has winged its flight before you to meet you at the Judgment. But the future is yours, and God helping you, the dark and cloudy day may yet have its golden sunset! Up, and with the earnestness of men resolve to flee sin and cleave to the Lord, that that dreadful hour may never arrive, in which your own knell shall thus be rung-"If you, even YOU had known in this your day, the things that belong to your peace, but now they are forever hidden from your eyes."
Can I close these solemn thoughts without a word of incentive and encouragement to God's own people? The text tells us that there are to be different degrees of punishment in a state of woe; but there are other passages in abundance, which teach us the cheering corresponding truth, that there are to be different degrees of bliss in a future heaven. One star is to differ from another star in glory. There are to be rulers over five, and rulers over ten cities-those who are to be in the outskirts of glory, and those basking in the sunlight of the Eternal Throne!-Is this no call on us to be up and doing?-not to be content with the circumference, but to seek nearness to the glorious center-not only to have crowns shining as the brightness of the firmament, but to have a tiara of stars in that crown? It is the degree of holiness now that will decide the degree of happiness then-the transactions of time will regulate the awards of eternity.
And as we have seen that memory will increase and aggravate the wretchedness of the lost, so will the same purified ennobled power intensify the bliss of the saved. Ah! with what joy will they re-traverse life, mark every successfully resisted temptation-every triumph over base passion and sordid self-every sacrifice made for the glory of God and the good of man-every affliction they have meekly borne-every cross they have submissively carried-every kindly unostentatious deed, done from motives of love and gratitude to the Savior. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. The Christian life is action; it is not theory-it is not dreamy thought-sickly sentimentalism. The formula of the great Judge's sentence on the last day to the Righteous is (not "well thought," or "well purposed," but)-"well DONE;" to the Wicked-"Inasmuch as you DID it not."
Fellow sinners, washed by the same blood-fellow pilgrims, traveling to the same eternity-fellow prisoners, who are so soon to stand at the same Great Judgement-are we ready to meet the summons which may sooner than we think startle us in the midst of our neglected privileges?-"Go! Give an account of your stewardship!"
http://articles.ochristian.com/article2890.shtml
The Great Life
By Oswald Chambers
'Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: . . Let not your heart be troubled.'
John 14:27
Whenever a thing becomes difficult in personal experience, we are in danger of blaming God, but it is we who are in the wrong, not God, there is some perversity somewhere that we will not let go. Immediately we do, everything becomes as clear as daylight. As long as we try to serve two ends, ourselves and God, there is perplexity. The attitude must be one of complete reliance on God. When once we get there, there is nothing easier than living the saintly life; difficulty comes in when we want to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own ends.
Whenever you obey God, His seal is always that of peace, the witness of an unfathomable peace, which is not natural, but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, tarry till it does or find out the reason why it does not. If you are acting on an impulse, or from a sense of the heroic, the peace of Jesus will not witness; there is no simplicity or confidence in God, because the spirit of simplicity is born of the Holy Ghost, not of your decisions. Every decision brings a reaction of simplicity.
My questions come whenever I cease to obey. When I have obeyed God, the problems never come between me and God, they come as probes to keep the mind going on with amazement at the revelation of God. Any problem that comes between God and myself springs out of disobedience; any problem, and there are many, that is alongside me while I obey God, increases my ecstatic delight, because I know that my Father knows, and I am going to watch and see how He unravels this thing.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article10101.shtml
'Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: . . Let not your heart be troubled.'
John 14:27
Whenever a thing becomes difficult in personal experience, we are in danger of blaming God, but it is we who are in the wrong, not God, there is some perversity somewhere that we will not let go. Immediately we do, everything becomes as clear as daylight. As long as we try to serve two ends, ourselves and God, there is perplexity. The attitude must be one of complete reliance on God. When once we get there, there is nothing easier than living the saintly life; difficulty comes in when we want to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own ends.
Whenever you obey God, His seal is always that of peace, the witness of an unfathomable peace, which is not natural, but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, tarry till it does or find out the reason why it does not. If you are acting on an impulse, or from a sense of the heroic, the peace of Jesus will not witness; there is no simplicity or confidence in God, because the spirit of simplicity is born of the Holy Ghost, not of your decisions. Every decision brings a reaction of simplicity.
My questions come whenever I cease to obey. When I have obeyed God, the problems never come between me and God, they come as probes to keep the mind going on with amazement at the revelation of God. Any problem that comes between God and myself springs out of disobedience; any problem, and there are many, that is alongside me while I obey God, increases my ecstatic delight, because I know that my Father knows, and I am going to watch and see how He unravels this thing.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article10101.shtml
Therefore, choose
By A.B. Simpson
Men are choosing every day the spiritual or earthly. And as we choose we are taking our place unconsciously with the friends of Christ or the world. It is not merely what we say; it is what we prefer. When Solomon made his great choice at Gibeon, God said to him, Because this was in thine heart . . . to ask wisdom, . . . wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee (2 Chronicles 1:11-12).
It was not merely that he said it because it was right to say and would please God if he said it. But it was the thing his heart preferred, and God saw it in his heart and gave it to him, along with riches, wealth and honor that he had not chosen. What are we choosing? it is our choice that settles our destiny.
It is not how we feel, but how we purpose. Have we chosen the good part?
Have we said, "Whatever else I am or have, let me be God's child; let me have His favor and blessing; let me please Him?" Or have we said, I must have this thing, and then I will see about religion?" Alas, God has seen what was in our hearts, and perhaps He has already said, "They have their reward."
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4508.shtml
Men are choosing every day the spiritual or earthly. And as we choose we are taking our place unconsciously with the friends of Christ or the world. It is not merely what we say; it is what we prefer. When Solomon made his great choice at Gibeon, God said to him, Because this was in thine heart . . . to ask wisdom, . . . wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee (2 Chronicles 1:11-12).
It was not merely that he said it because it was right to say and would please God if he said it. But it was the thing his heart preferred, and God saw it in his heart and gave it to him, along with riches, wealth and honor that he had not chosen. What are we choosing? it is our choice that settles our destiny.
It is not how we feel, but how we purpose. Have we chosen the good part?
Have we said, "Whatever else I am or have, let me be God's child; let me have His favor and blessing; let me please Him?" Or have we said, I must have this thing, and then I will see about religion?" Alas, God has seen what was in our hearts, and perhaps He has already said, "They have their reward."
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4508.shtml
Night of Pure Faith
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
"Lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him" (Gen. 15:12).
The sun at last went down, and the swift, eastern night cast its heavy veil over the scene. Worn out with the mental conflict, the watchings, and the exertions of the day, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and in that sleep is soul was oppressed with a dense and dreadful darkness, such as almost stifled him, and lay like a nightmare upon his heart. Do you understand something of the horror of that darkness? When some terrible sorrow which seems so hard to reconcile with perfect love, crushes down upon the soul, wringing from it all its peaceful rest in the pitifulness of God, and launching it on a sea unlit by a ray of hope; when unkindness, and cruelty maltreat the trusting heart, till it begins to doubt whether there be a God overhead who can see and still permit--these know something of the "horror of great darkness."
It is thus that human life is made up; brightness and gloom; shadow and sun; long tracks of cloud, succeeded by brilliant glints of light, and amid all Divine justice is working out its own schemes, affecting others equally with the individual soul which seems the subject of special discipline. O ye who are filled with the horror of great darkness because of God's dealings with mankind, learn to trust that infallible wisdom, which is co-assessor with immutable justice; and know that He who passed through the horror of the darkness of Calvary, with the cry of forsakenness, is ready to bear you company through the valley of the shadow of death till you see the sun shining upon its further side. Let us, by our Forerunner, send forward our anchor, Hope, within the veil that parts us from the unseen; where it will grapple in ground and will not yield, but hold until the day dawns, and we follow it into the haven guaranteed to us by God's immutable counsel. --F. B. Meyer
The disciples thought that that angry sea separated them from Jesus. Nay, some of them thought worse than that; they thought that the trouble that had come upon them was a sign that Jesus had forgotten all about them, and did not care for them. Oh, dear friend, that is when troubles have a sting, when the devil whispers, "God has forgotten you; God has forsaken you"; when your unbelieving heart cries as Gideon cried, "If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?" The evil has come upon you to bring the Lord nearer to you. The evil has not come upon you to separate you from Jesus, but to make you cling to Him more faithfully, more tenaciously, more simply. --F. S. Webster, M.A.
Never should we so abandon ourselves to God as when He seems to have abandoned us. Let us enjoy light and consolation when it is His pleasure to give it to us, but let us not attach ourselves to His gifts, but to Himself; and when He plunges us into the night of pure faith, let us still press on through the agonizing darkness.
Oh, for faith that brings the triumph
When defeat seems strangely near!
Oh, for faith that brings the triumph
Into victory's ringing cheer--
Faith triumphant; knowing not defeat or fear.
--Herbert Booth
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9535.shtml
"Lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him" (Gen. 15:12).
The sun at last went down, and the swift, eastern night cast its heavy veil over the scene. Worn out with the mental conflict, the watchings, and the exertions of the day, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and in that sleep is soul was oppressed with a dense and dreadful darkness, such as almost stifled him, and lay like a nightmare upon his heart. Do you understand something of the horror of that darkness? When some terrible sorrow which seems so hard to reconcile with perfect love, crushes down upon the soul, wringing from it all its peaceful rest in the pitifulness of God, and launching it on a sea unlit by a ray of hope; when unkindness, and cruelty maltreat the trusting heart, till it begins to doubt whether there be a God overhead who can see and still permit--these know something of the "horror of great darkness."
It is thus that human life is made up; brightness and gloom; shadow and sun; long tracks of cloud, succeeded by brilliant glints of light, and amid all Divine justice is working out its own schemes, affecting others equally with the individual soul which seems the subject of special discipline. O ye who are filled with the horror of great darkness because of God's dealings with mankind, learn to trust that infallible wisdom, which is co-assessor with immutable justice; and know that He who passed through the horror of the darkness of Calvary, with the cry of forsakenness, is ready to bear you company through the valley of the shadow of death till you see the sun shining upon its further side. Let us, by our Forerunner, send forward our anchor, Hope, within the veil that parts us from the unseen; where it will grapple in ground and will not yield, but hold until the day dawns, and we follow it into the haven guaranteed to us by God's immutable counsel. --F. B. Meyer
The disciples thought that that angry sea separated them from Jesus. Nay, some of them thought worse than that; they thought that the trouble that had come upon them was a sign that Jesus had forgotten all about them, and did not care for them. Oh, dear friend, that is when troubles have a sting, when the devil whispers, "God has forgotten you; God has forsaken you"; when your unbelieving heart cries as Gideon cried, "If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?" The evil has come upon you to bring the Lord nearer to you. The evil has not come upon you to separate you from Jesus, but to make you cling to Him more faithfully, more tenaciously, more simply. --F. S. Webster, M.A.
Never should we so abandon ourselves to God as when He seems to have abandoned us. Let us enjoy light and consolation when it is His pleasure to give it to us, but let us not attach ourselves to His gifts, but to Himself; and when He plunges us into the night of pure faith, let us still press on through the agonizing darkness.
Oh, for faith that brings the triumph
When defeat seems strangely near!
Oh, for faith that brings the triumph
Into victory's ringing cheer--
Faith triumphant; knowing not defeat or fear.
--Herbert Booth
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9535.shtml
The Saint Must Walk Alone
By A.W. Tozer
Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.
In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man's creation), that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart from his contemporaries.
Another lonely man was Noah who, of all the antediluvians, found grace in the sight of God; and every shred of evidence points to the aloneness of his life even while surrounded by his people.
Again, Abraham had Sarah and Lot, as well as many servants and herdsmen, but who can read his story and the apostolic comment upon it without sensing instantly that he was a man "whose soul was alike a star and dwelt apart"? As far as we know not one word did God ever speak to him in the company of men. Face down he communed with his God, and the innate dignity of the man forbade that he assume this posture in the presence of others. How sweet and solemn was the scene that night of the sacrifice when he saw the lamps of fire moving between the pieces of offering. There, alone with a horror of great darkness upon him, he heard the voice of God and knew that he was a man marked for divine favor.
Moses also was a man apart. While yet attached to the court of Pharaoh he took long walks alone, and during one of these walks while far removed from the crowds he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting and came to the rescue of his countryman. After the resultant break with Egypt he dwelt in almost complete seclusion in the desert. There, while he watched his sheep alone, the wonder of the burning bush appeared to him, and later on the peak of Sinai he crouched alone to gaze in fascinated awe at the Presence, partly hidden, partly disclosed, within the cloud and fire.
The prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness. They loved their people and gloried in the religion of the fathers, but their loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their zeal for the welfare of the nation of Israel drove them away from the crowd and into long periods of heaviness. "I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children," cried one and unwittingly spoke for all the rest.
Most revealing of all is the sight of that One of whom Moses and all the prophets did write, treading His lonely way to the cross. His deep loneliness was unrelieved by the presence of the multitudes.
'Tis midnight, and on Olive's brow
The star is dimmed that lately shone;
'Tis midnight; in the garden now,
The suffering Savior prays alone.
'Tis midnight, and from all removed
The Savior wrestles lone with fears;
E'en the disciple whom He loved
Heeds not his Master's grief and tears.
- William B. Tappan
He died alone in the darkness hidden from the sight of mortal man and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw. There are some things too sacred for any eye but God's to look upon. The curiosity, the clamor, the well-meant but blundering effort to help can only hinder the waiting soul and make unlikely if not impossible the communication of the secret message of God to the worshiping heart.
Sometimes we react by a kind of religious reflex and repeat dutifully the proper words and phrases even though they fail to express our real feelings and lack the authenticity of personal experience. Right now is such a time. A certain conventional loyalty may lead some who hear this unfamiliar truth expressed for the first time to say brightly, "Oh, I am never lonely. Christ said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you,' and 'Lo, I am with you alway.' How can I be lonely when Jesus is with me?"
Now I do not want to reflect on the sincerity of any Christian soul, but this stock testimony is too neat to be real. It is obviously what the speaker thinks should be true rather than what he has proved to be true by the test of experience. This cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him by society. The sense of companionship which he mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people. Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. "They all forsook Him, and fled."
The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature. God made us for each other. The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right. The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share inner experiences, he is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.
The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find. But he should not expect things to be otherwise. After all he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart. He walks with God in the garden of his own soul - and who but God can walk there with him? He is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord's house. He has seen that of which they have only heard, and he walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, "He has seen a vision."
The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Savior glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none, he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.
It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd - that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's summum bonum.
Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely man of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone.
The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the brokenhearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world, he is all the more able to help it. Meister Eckhart taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. "God will not suffer you to lose anything by it," he told them. "You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you." This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day.
The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful "adjustment" to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article133.shtml
Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness.
In the morning of the world (or should we say, in that strange darkness that came soon after the dawn of man's creation), that pious soul, Enoch, walked with God and was not, for God took him; and while it is not stated in so many words, a fair inference is that Enoch walked a path quite apart from his contemporaries.
Another lonely man was Noah who, of all the antediluvians, found grace in the sight of God; and every shred of evidence points to the aloneness of his life even while surrounded by his people.
Again, Abraham had Sarah and Lot, as well as many servants and herdsmen, but who can read his story and the apostolic comment upon it without sensing instantly that he was a man "whose soul was alike a star and dwelt apart"? As far as we know not one word did God ever speak to him in the company of men. Face down he communed with his God, and the innate dignity of the man forbade that he assume this posture in the presence of others. How sweet and solemn was the scene that night of the sacrifice when he saw the lamps of fire moving between the pieces of offering. There, alone with a horror of great darkness upon him, he heard the voice of God and knew that he was a man marked for divine favor.
Moses also was a man apart. While yet attached to the court of Pharaoh he took long walks alone, and during one of these walks while far removed from the crowds he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting and came to the rescue of his countryman. After the resultant break with Egypt he dwelt in almost complete seclusion in the desert. There, while he watched his sheep alone, the wonder of the burning bush appeared to him, and later on the peak of Sinai he crouched alone to gaze in fascinated awe at the Presence, partly hidden, partly disclosed, within the cloud and fire.
The prophets of pre-Christian times differed widely from each other, but one mark they bore in common was their enforced loneliness. They loved their people and gloried in the religion of the fathers, but their loyalty to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their zeal for the welfare of the nation of Israel drove them away from the crowd and into long periods of heaviness. "I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children," cried one and unwittingly spoke for all the rest.
Most revealing of all is the sight of that One of whom Moses and all the prophets did write, treading His lonely way to the cross. His deep loneliness was unrelieved by the presence of the multitudes.
'Tis midnight, and on Olive's brow
The star is dimmed that lately shone;
'Tis midnight; in the garden now,
The suffering Savior prays alone.
'Tis midnight, and from all removed
The Savior wrestles lone with fears;
E'en the disciple whom He loved
Heeds not his Master's grief and tears.
- William B. Tappan
He died alone in the darkness hidden from the sight of mortal man and no one saw Him when He arose triumphant and walked out of the tomb, though many saw Him afterward and bore witness to what they saw. There are some things too sacred for any eye but God's to look upon. The curiosity, the clamor, the well-meant but blundering effort to help can only hinder the waiting soul and make unlikely if not impossible the communication of the secret message of God to the worshiping heart.
Sometimes we react by a kind of religious reflex and repeat dutifully the proper words and phrases even though they fail to express our real feelings and lack the authenticity of personal experience. Right now is such a time. A certain conventional loyalty may lead some who hear this unfamiliar truth expressed for the first time to say brightly, "Oh, I am never lonely. Christ said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you,' and 'Lo, I am with you alway.' How can I be lonely when Jesus is with me?"
Now I do not want to reflect on the sincerity of any Christian soul, but this stock testimony is too neat to be real. It is obviously what the speaker thinks should be true rather than what he has proved to be true by the test of experience. This cheerful denial of loneliness proves only that the speaker has never walked with God without the support and encouragement afforded him by society. The sense of companionship which he mistakenly attributes to the presence of Christ may and probably does arise from the presence of friendly people. Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. "They all forsook Him, and fled."
The pain of loneliness arises from the constitution of our nature. God made us for each other. The desire for human companionship is completely natural and right. The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share inner experiences, he is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.
The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. A certain amount of social fellowship will of course be his as he mingles with religious persons in the regular activities of the church, but true spiritual fellowship will be hard to find. But he should not expect things to be otherwise. After all he is a stranger and a pilgrim, and the journey he takes is not on his feet but in his heart. He walks with God in the garden of his own soul - and who but God can walk there with him? He is of another spirit from the multitudes that tread the courts of the Lord's house. He has seen that of which they have only heard, and he walks among them somewhat as Zacharias walked after his return from the altar when the people whispered, "He has seen a vision."
The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Savior glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglected. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and overserious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none, he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.
It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd - that Christ is All in All, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's summum bonum.
Two things remain to be said. One, that the lonely man of whom we speak is not a haughty man, nor is he the holier-than-thou, austere saint so bitterly satirized in popular literature. He is likely to feel that he is the least of all men and is sure to blame himself for his very loneliness. He wants to share his feelings with others and to open his heart to some like-minded soul who will understand him, but the spiritual climate around him does not encourage it, so he remains silent and tells his griefs to God alone.
The second thing is that the lonely saint is not the withdrawn man who hardens himself against human suffering and spends his days contemplating the heavens. Just the opposite is true. His loneliness makes him sympathetic to the approach of the brokenhearted and the fallen and the sin-bruised. Because he is detached from the world, he is all the more able to help it. Meister Eckhart taught his followers that if they should find themselves in prayer and happen to remember that a poor widow needed food, they should break off the prayer instantly and go care for the widow. "God will not suffer you to lose anything by it," he told them. "You can take up again in prayer where you left off and the Lord will make it up to you." This is typical of the great mystics and masters of the interior life from Paul to the present day.
The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. In their effort to achieve restful "adjustment" to unregenerate society they have lost their pilgrim character and become an essential part of the very moral order against which they are sent to protest. The world recognizes them and accepts them for what they are. And this is the saddest thing that can be said about them. They are not lonely, but neither are they saints.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article133.shtml
Friday, June 25, 2010
Idols and the Lost Vision of God
By G. Campbell Morgan
"...he brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made:...and he called it Nehushtan (a piece of brass)"
(2 Kings 18:4).
I see a people hungering after what they have lost. An idol always means this. An idol created by the fingers of men, or chosen by men and appointed to the place of a god, is forevermore a revelation of the sense of need, the sense of lack. It is an evidence that the deepest thing in the human heart is its cry after God. This is not to defend idolatry, not to defend the action of these people in the deification of the brazen serpent, but to say that when people lose their consciousness of God they do not lose their sense of need for God.
Whereas I look back on these people in this hour and say they have lost their vision of God, have lost the sense of His nearness, have wandered far away from that spiritual communion with Him which is in itself a fire and a force, I say also that having lost the vision and having lost the sense, they are restless. When the one true and living God, having been revealed and known, is lost to consciousness the heart will clamantly cry for that which is lost. This worship of the serpent was certainly a revelation of the hunger of the people after God.
There is one other matter which I think this event reveals. Having lost their vision of God, and still being conscious of the necessity for some object of worship around which their spiritual life could gather, their deification of the serpent was a revelation of the utmost confusion. It was history misinterpreted.
A blessing of the olden days was made a curse in the present moment by that misinterpretation of their own history Setting up the brazen serpent as an object of worship suggested that the serpent itself had been the means of their healing on the past occasion.
Their vision of God lost, and the cry of their souls after such a God, and the blundering confusion of a people who, looking back at their own history, emphasized it wrong, interpreted it falsely, and treated the serpent as though it had been the means of their healing in the past--such was the abuse of the brazen serpent.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9639.shtml
"...he brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made:...and he called it Nehushtan (a piece of brass)"
(2 Kings 18:4).
I see a people hungering after what they have lost. An idol always means this. An idol created by the fingers of men, or chosen by men and appointed to the place of a god, is forevermore a revelation of the sense of need, the sense of lack. It is an evidence that the deepest thing in the human heart is its cry after God. This is not to defend idolatry, not to defend the action of these people in the deification of the brazen serpent, but to say that when people lose their consciousness of God they do not lose their sense of need for God.
Whereas I look back on these people in this hour and say they have lost their vision of God, have lost the sense of His nearness, have wandered far away from that spiritual communion with Him which is in itself a fire and a force, I say also that having lost the vision and having lost the sense, they are restless. When the one true and living God, having been revealed and known, is lost to consciousness the heart will clamantly cry for that which is lost. This worship of the serpent was certainly a revelation of the hunger of the people after God.
There is one other matter which I think this event reveals. Having lost their vision of God, and still being conscious of the necessity for some object of worship around which their spiritual life could gather, their deification of the serpent was a revelation of the utmost confusion. It was history misinterpreted.
A blessing of the olden days was made a curse in the present moment by that misinterpretation of their own history Setting up the brazen serpent as an object of worship suggested that the serpent itself had been the means of their healing on the past occasion.
Their vision of God lost, and the cry of their souls after such a God, and the blundering confusion of a people who, looking back at their own history, emphasized it wrong, interpreted it falsely, and treated the serpent as though it had been the means of their healing in the past--such was the abuse of the brazen serpent.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9639.shtml
Building For Eternity
By Oswald Chambers
'For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?'
Luke 14:28
Our Lord refers not to a cost we have to count, but to a cost which He has counted. The cost was those thirty years in Nazareth, those three years of popularity, scandal and hatred, the deep unfathomable agony in Gethsemane, and the onslaught at Calvary - the pivot upon which the whole of Time and Eternity turns. Jesus Christ has counted the cost. Men are not going to laugh at Him at last and say - "This man began to build, and was not able to finish."
The conditions of discipleship laid down by Our Lord in vv. 26, 27 and 33 mean that the men and women He is going to use in His mighty building enterprises are those in whom He has done everything. "If any man come to Me, and hate not...he cannot be My disciple." Our Lord implies that the only men and women He will use in His building enterprises are those who love Him personally, passionately and devotedly beyond any of the closest ties on earth. The conditions are stern, but they are glorious.
All that we build is going to be inspected by God. Is God going to detect in His searching fire that we have built on the foundation of Jesus some enterprise of our own? These are days of tremendous enterprises, days when we are trying to work for God, and therein is the snare. Profoundly speaking, we can never work for God. Jesus takes us over for His enterprises, His building schemes entirely, and no soul has any right to claim where he shall be put.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9873.shtml
'For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?'
Luke 14:28
Our Lord refers not to a cost we have to count, but to a cost which He has counted. The cost was those thirty years in Nazareth, those three years of popularity, scandal and hatred, the deep unfathomable agony in Gethsemane, and the onslaught at Calvary - the pivot upon which the whole of Time and Eternity turns. Jesus Christ has counted the cost. Men are not going to laugh at Him at last and say - "This man began to build, and was not able to finish."
The conditions of discipleship laid down by Our Lord in vv. 26, 27 and 33 mean that the men and women He is going to use in His mighty building enterprises are those in whom He has done everything. "If any man come to Me, and hate not...he cannot be My disciple." Our Lord implies that the only men and women He will use in His building enterprises are those who love Him personally, passionately and devotedly beyond any of the closest ties on earth. The conditions are stern, but they are glorious.
All that we build is going to be inspected by God. Is God going to detect in His searching fire that we have built on the foundation of Jesus some enterprise of our own? These are days of tremendous enterprises, days when we are trying to work for God, and therein is the snare. Profoundly speaking, we can never work for God. Jesus takes us over for His enterprises, His building schemes entirely, and no soul has any right to claim where he shall be put.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9873.shtml
Accepting Personal Responsibility
By A.W. Tozer
It matters little how twisted a man's life may be, there is hope for him if he will but establish a right attitude toward God and refuse to admit any other element into his spiritual thinking. God and I; here is the beginning and the end of personal religion. Faith refuses to acknowledge that there is or ever can be a third party to this holy relation.
Attitude is all-important. Let the soul take a quiet attitude of faith and love toward God, and from there on the responsibility is God's. He will make good on His commitments. There is not on earth a lonely spot where a Christian cannot live and be spiritually victorious if God sends him there. He carries his own climate with him or has it supplied supernaturally when he arrives. Since he is not dependent for his spiritual health upon local moral standards or current religious beliefs, he lives through a thousand earthly changes, unaffected by any of them. He has a private supply from above and is in reality a little world within a world and very much of a wonder to the rest of creation.
Because this is true, we can easily see why we should never blame our spiritual failures on others. The habit of seeking weak consolation by blaming our poor showing on unfavorable circumstances is a damaging evil and should not for one moment be tolerated. To live a lifetime believing that our inner weakness was the result of an external situation and then find at the last that we ourselves were to blame--that is too painful to be contemplated.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article5469.shtml
It matters little how twisted a man's life may be, there is hope for him if he will but establish a right attitude toward God and refuse to admit any other element into his spiritual thinking. God and I; here is the beginning and the end of personal religion. Faith refuses to acknowledge that there is or ever can be a third party to this holy relation.
Attitude is all-important. Let the soul take a quiet attitude of faith and love toward God, and from there on the responsibility is God's. He will make good on His commitments. There is not on earth a lonely spot where a Christian cannot live and be spiritually victorious if God sends him there. He carries his own climate with him or has it supplied supernaturally when he arrives. Since he is not dependent for his spiritual health upon local moral standards or current religious beliefs, he lives through a thousand earthly changes, unaffected by any of them. He has a private supply from above and is in reality a little world within a world and very much of a wonder to the rest of creation.
Because this is true, we can easily see why we should never blame our spiritual failures on others. The habit of seeking weak consolation by blaming our poor showing on unfavorable circumstances is a damaging evil and should not for one moment be tolerated. To live a lifetime believing that our inner weakness was the result of an external situation and then find at the last that we ourselves were to blame--that is too painful to be contemplated.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article5469.shtml
And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit
By A.B. Simpson
The Holy Spirit becomes to the consecrated heart the Spirit of intercession. We have two Advocates. We have an Advocate with the Father, who prays for us at God's right hand. We also have the Holy Spirit, the Advocate within who prays in us, inspiring our petitions and presenting them, through Christ, to God. We need this Advocate. We know not what to pray for and we know not how to pray as we ought, but He breathes in the holy heart the desires that we may not always understand, the, groanings which we could not utter. God understands, and He, with a loving Father's heart, is always searching our hearts to find the Spirit's prayer and to answer it.
He finds many a prayer there that we have not discovered, and answers many a cry that we never understood. And when we reach our heavenly home and read the records of life, we shall better know and appreciate the infinite love of that Divine Friend who has watched within as the Spirit of prayer and breathed out our every need to the heart of God.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4609.shtml
The Holy Spirit becomes to the consecrated heart the Spirit of intercession. We have two Advocates. We have an Advocate with the Father, who prays for us at God's right hand. We also have the Holy Spirit, the Advocate within who prays in us, inspiring our petitions and presenting them, through Christ, to God. We need this Advocate. We know not what to pray for and we know not how to pray as we ought, but He breathes in the holy heart the desires that we may not always understand, the, groanings which we could not utter. God understands, and He, with a loving Father's heart, is always searching our hearts to find the Spirit's prayer and to answer it.
He finds many a prayer there that we have not discovered, and answers many a cry that we never understood. And when we reach our heavenly home and read the records of life, we shall better know and appreciate the infinite love of that Divine Friend who has watched within as the Spirit of prayer and breathed out our every need to the heart of God.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4609.shtml
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Proclaim What You Have Learned
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
"What I tell you in the darkness, speak ye in the light" (Matt. 10:27).
Our Lord is constantly taking us into the dark, that He may tell us things. Into the dark of the shadowed home, where bereavement has drawn the blinds; into the dark of the lonely, desolate life, where some infirmity closes us in from the light and stir of life; into the dark of some crushing sorrow and disappointment.
Then He tells us His secrets, great and wonderful, eternal and infinite; He causes the eye which has become dazzled by the glare of earth to behold the heavenly constellations; and the car to detect the undertones of His voice, which is often drowned amid the tumult of earth's strident cries.
But such revelations always imply a corresponding responsibility--'that speak ye in the light--that proclaim upon the housetops."
We are not meant to always linger in the dark, or stay in the closet; presently we shall be summoned to take our place in the rush and storm of life; and when that moment comes, we are to speak and proclaim what we have learned.
This gives a new meaning to suffering, the saddest element in which is often its apparent aimlessness. "How useless I am!" "What am I doing for the betterment of men?" "Wherefore this waste of the precious spikenard of my soul?"
Such are the desperate laments of the sufferer. But God has a purpose in it all. He has withdrawn His child to the higher altitudes of fellowship, that he may hear God speaking face to face, and bear the message to his fellows at the mountain foot.
Were the forty days wasted that Moses spent on the Mount, or the period spent at Horeb by Elijah, or the years spent in Arabia by Paul?
There is no short cut to the life of faith, which is the all-vital condition of a holy and victorious life. We must have periods of lonely meditation and fellowship with God. That our souls should have their mountains of fellowship, their valley of quiet rest beneath the shadow of a great rock, their nights beneath the stars, when darkness has veiled the material and silenced the stir of human life, and has opened the view of the infinite and eternal, is as indispensable as that our bodies should have food.
Thus alone can the sense of God's presence become the fixed possession of the soul, enabling it to say repeatedly, with the Psalmist, "Thou art near, 0 God." --F. B. Meyer
"Some hearts, like evening primroses, open more beautifully in the shadows of life."
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9277.shtml
"What I tell you in the darkness, speak ye in the light" (Matt. 10:27).
Our Lord is constantly taking us into the dark, that He may tell us things. Into the dark of the shadowed home, where bereavement has drawn the blinds; into the dark of the lonely, desolate life, where some infirmity closes us in from the light and stir of life; into the dark of some crushing sorrow and disappointment.
Then He tells us His secrets, great and wonderful, eternal and infinite; He causes the eye which has become dazzled by the glare of earth to behold the heavenly constellations; and the car to detect the undertones of His voice, which is often drowned amid the tumult of earth's strident cries.
But such revelations always imply a corresponding responsibility--'that speak ye in the light--that proclaim upon the housetops."
We are not meant to always linger in the dark, or stay in the closet; presently we shall be summoned to take our place in the rush and storm of life; and when that moment comes, we are to speak and proclaim what we have learned.
This gives a new meaning to suffering, the saddest element in which is often its apparent aimlessness. "How useless I am!" "What am I doing for the betterment of men?" "Wherefore this waste of the precious spikenard of my soul?"
Such are the desperate laments of the sufferer. But God has a purpose in it all. He has withdrawn His child to the higher altitudes of fellowship, that he may hear God speaking face to face, and bear the message to his fellows at the mountain foot.
Were the forty days wasted that Moses spent on the Mount, or the period spent at Horeb by Elijah, or the years spent in Arabia by Paul?
There is no short cut to the life of faith, which is the all-vital condition of a holy and victorious life. We must have periods of lonely meditation and fellowship with God. That our souls should have their mountains of fellowship, their valley of quiet rest beneath the shadow of a great rock, their nights beneath the stars, when darkness has veiled the material and silenced the stir of human life, and has opened the view of the infinite and eternal, is as indispensable as that our bodies should have food.
Thus alone can the sense of God's presence become the fixed possession of the soul, enabling it to say repeatedly, with the Psalmist, "Thou art near, 0 God." --F. B. Meyer
"Some hearts, like evening primroses, open more beautifully in the shadows of life."
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9277.shtml
Unlimited Resources but Limited Receptacles
By A.W. Tozer
Since God is infinite, whatever He is must be infinite also; that is, it must be without any actual or conceivable limits. The moment we allow ourselves to think of God as having limits, the one of whom we are thinking is not God but someone or something less than and different from Him. To think rightly of God we must conceive of Him as being altogether boundless in His goodness, mercy, love, grace and in whatever else we may properly attribute to the Deity. It is not enough that we acknowledge God's infinite resources; we must believe also that He is infinitely generous to bestow them. The first is not too great a strain on our faith.
Even the deist will admit that the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, must be rich beyond the power of man to conceive. But to believe that God is a giver as well as a possessor takes an advanced faith and presupposes that there has been a divine revelation to that effect which gives validity to our expectations. Which indeed there has been. We call this revelation the Bible.
Believing all this, why are we Christians so poverty stricken? I think it is because we have not learned that God's gifts are meted out according to the taker, not according to the giver.
Though almighty and all-wise, God yet cannot pour a great gift into a small receptacle.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article5145.shtml
Since God is infinite, whatever He is must be infinite also; that is, it must be without any actual or conceivable limits. The moment we allow ourselves to think of God as having limits, the one of whom we are thinking is not God but someone or something less than and different from Him. To think rightly of God we must conceive of Him as being altogether boundless in His goodness, mercy, love, grace and in whatever else we may properly attribute to the Deity. It is not enough that we acknowledge God's infinite resources; we must believe also that He is infinitely generous to bestow them. The first is not too great a strain on our faith.
Even the deist will admit that the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, must be rich beyond the power of man to conceive. But to believe that God is a giver as well as a possessor takes an advanced faith and presupposes that there has been a divine revelation to that effect which gives validity to our expectations. Which indeed there has been. We call this revelation the Bible.
Believing all this, why are we Christians so poverty stricken? I think it is because we have not learned that God's gifts are meted out according to the taker, not according to the giver.
Though almighty and all-wise, God yet cannot pour a great gift into a small receptacle.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article5145.shtml
Missing Notes In the Modern Church
By Vance Havner
It is very fashionable nowadays to ask, "What is wrong with the Church?" It is no new subject. There has always been something or other wrong with the professing church, and there have always been speakers aplenty to discuss it. Unfortunately, their speaking usually relieves only the speaker and not the situation. One is reminded of the soap-box orator in London some years ago. He was lambasting the government with a vengeance. Somebody asked a policeman: "Why don't you do something with him?" "Oh, leave 'im alone," the bobby replied, "It relieves 'im and it don't 'urt us."
I venture to suggest three characteristics of the New Testament Church that are out of style today. There are other marks of the Early Church that are also out of style, but one cannot cover everything in one message. I think that if we seriously considered these lost characteristics and recovered them we would be a long way toward answering the question, "What is wrong with the Church?"
The New Testament Church was an intolerant church. At once we throw ourselves open to a broadside of protest. "Intolerant" is a scandalous word to use these days, for if there is anything that is in style among our "progressive" churches it is that word "tolerance." You would think that intolerance was the unpardonable sin. We are majoring as never in all church history on being broad-minded. That we have become so broad we have become also pitifully shallow never seems to disturb us. We must "broaden or bust." Of course, some experts in tolerance can be amazingly intolerant of those who do not share their broad-mindedness, but that does not disturb them either.
There is, of course, a false, pharasaic intolerance that has no place in a true church. And one encounters it again and again among conservative Christians. It has brought about the remark that the modernists are arid and the fundamentalists are acrid, that the former lack clarity and the latter charity. It has nicknamed the fundamentalists "feudamentalists" and gotten them a reputation for spending so much time sniping at each other that they have little time left to go after the devil.
But there is a proper intolerance, and the New Testament Church had it. They were intolerant of any way of salvation except Jesus Christ. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). That makes it straight and narrow, and it isn't what you are hearing in some localities these days. You are hearing that Jesus is the best way but that other ways are good and will lead to God just the same. Union meetings of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews create the impression that a general faith in God is enough without specific faith in Christ. Now, that cannot be true if no man comes to the Father but by Christ. The devils believe that there is one God and tremble: men believe it and do not even tremble, but expect to reach heaven by theism instead of by Calvary.
The New Testament Church was also intolerant of anything that threatened to compromise this Gospel of No Other Name. In Galatia men tried to mix in a little legalism, and in Colosse they were slipping in a bit of false mysticism -- and Paul would have none of it. He could have said nothing about it. I am sure that some of the false teachers must have accused him of seeing bugaboos and hobgoblins. He could have told Timothy to play ball with the apostates of his day, but, instead, he wrote, "From such turn away." He advised Titus to reject a heretic after the first and second admonition, which sounds uncomfortably intolerant. And even the gentle John forbad hospitality to those who abode not in the doctrine of Christ, asserting that "he that bids him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds." To be sure, we are not advised to bawl him out and throw stones after him until he is out of sight: but neither is there any encouragement for that fashionable modern fellowship with unbelievers.
The New Testament Church was intolerant of sin in its midst. When serious trouble first showed up in Ananias and Sapphira it was dealt with in sudden and certain terms. When immorality cropped out in Corinth Paul delivered the offender to the devil for the destruction of his flesh. It was in line with our Lord's teaching on discipline in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew. To be sure, it was to be done in love and tenderness, and the brother overtaken in a fault was to be restored by the spiritual ones, and Paul was quick to recommend the restoration of the Corinthian brother. But, still, sin was not to be glossed over and excused as we condone it today in our churches until liars, gamblers, drunkards, and divorcees fill prominent places in Sunday schools and on boards and have never as much as heard that we must be clean who bear the vessels of the Lord. We have let the camel get his foot in the door and then his head, until now the whole camel is inside and along with him other animals far more unsavory. Peter added even hogs and dogs to our spiritual zoology, and the lambs today are so mixed with every other species that what was once a sheepfold has become a zoo. Our Lord warned us that the shepherd who did not stand his ground when the wolves appeared was only a hireling. We are bidden to feed His sheep but not to feed wolves. I grant you that it is often a complicated problem and can be handled only on one's knees. But we are paying an awful price today for our sweet tolerance of sin within the Church. If the church of the Acts had overlooked iniquity and by-passed evil and smilingly looked the other way while the devil sneaked into every phase of her life as we have done today, Christianity would have died in infancy.
The New Testament Church had a healthy, holy intolerance. It got somewhere because it started out on a narrow road and stuck to it. It might easily have taken up a dozen wide boulevards and ended in destruction. We face the peril of the wide gate and the broad way today, and it tantalizes us all the more because "many enter through it." We were told a long time ago that "few there be" who take the S. and N., the Straight and Narrow. We Americans especially are gregarious; we like to run with the crowd. We had rather be called almost anything on earth than narrow; yet our Lord chose the adjective, and faithfulness to Him will prove that it still fits today.
I am sure that there were those who called the Early Church "exclusive," and predicted that it would never get anywhere until it became inclusive. "Exclusive" is another word that is anathema today and has been shoved into the limbo of the outmoded, along with "intolerant" and "narrow." But the New Testament Church was the most exclusive fellowship on earth. It was not just a society of people with good intentions. It was not a club for improving the old Adam. It was a fellowship of people who believed in Jesus Christ as the one and only Saviour. It seemed not to have a chance in the face of the great Roman world. It could easily have let down the bars and taken in all sorts of religiously minded folk, but it stuck to "Jesus Only." A river may look very lovely spread out all over a marsh, but to generate power it must narrow itself. We have endeavored to spread out the river today. We have sacrificed depth for width and instead of a power dam we have a stagnant swamp.
In the second place, the New Testament Church was not only intolerant, narrow, exclusive. IT WAS A REPELLENT CHURCH. Instead of attracting everybody, it repelled. In the fourth chapter of Acts the church was really going places for God. It was a great hour but dangerous. Could the church stand success? There is a turn in the story with the fifth chapter. It begins "But . . . " Ananias and Sapphira appear, trouble has arisen in the midst. There were plenty of liars in Jerusalem but these were in the church! But by the grace of God the church rose to the occasion and cleaned house. Ananias and Sapphira were carried out dead and the church rolled on. We read, "And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; and they were all with one accord on Solomon's porch." Here is the church in the full bloom of her power: a Spirit-filled church, a wonder-working (not a wondering!) church; a church that stirred up the devil.
Then we read that there were three reactions:
Even though people admired them a lot, outsiders were wary about joining them. On the other hand, those who put their trust in the Master were added right and left, men and women both.
People didn't join this church carelessly. They were afraid to. There was a holy awe that kept Tom, Dick, and Harry at a distance. People didn't rush into this fellowship just because it was the nice thing to do. It meant something to unite with this crowd. There was a holy repulsion, and I know of nothing that the church needs more today. It is the last thing we think we need. We are always trying to attract. Our programs, prizes, picnics, and pulpit pyrotechnics are aimed at drawing the people in. Here was a church that made people stand back! We have catered to the world, we have let the world slap the church on the back in coarse familiarity. Here was a church that prospered by repelling!
You will observe that all this followed on the heels of the death of Ananias and Sapphira. If the church took a stand today on sins within; if we thundered out, as Peter did here, against lying to the Holy Spirit, it would make the world stand at a respectful distance, and the fear of God would fall on a generation that laughs at the church. What was the sin of Ananias and Sapphira? They pretended to make a full consecration which was not real. And are not our churches filled with men and women who sing, "I surrender all," when they have not surrendered anything? The church is cluttered with people who should never have joined. She already has too many of the kind she has. We need a holy repulsion. You don't have to be different to be a church-member now. There is little about the average church to make men stand back in reverence. In other days we at least had church discipline. I can recall the old Saturday church meetings, when Ananias and Sapphira were dealt with. Some mistakes were made but there was a healthy regard for the sanctity of the church. When the church takes a stand, it repels careless "joiners."
But someone asks, "What would people think if we took such a stand?" Let us see what happened here: "But the people magnified them." The church had favor with all the people (Acts 2:47). The church that stands in the power of the Spirit wins the respect of the people. We have driven them away in trying to attract them. We have lost favor in trying to win favor. The world is sick and disgusted with the church making a clown of itself, trying to talk the slang of this age, running third-rate amusement parlors, playing bingo and putting on rummage sales. The church, it has been said, is not running a show-boat but a life-boat, and we make ourselves ridiculous in trying to compete with the world. The preacher and church that stand for God and righteousness will be magnified.
When judgment fell on Ananias and Sapphira the world sat up and took notice. Today we coddle and excuse our sins, call weakness what God calls wickedness. We shelter sin in the Church, and when a preacher would cry out against it he is advised, "Don't be too hard, nobody is perfect," and is given a dressing-down from the text, "Judge not that you be not judged." We have let down the bars until anybody can get into a church and nobody ever gets out. If we raised the New Testament standard it would stop the rush of superficial disciples and win respect where now there is ridicule.
"But nobody would ever join!" do we hear? Let us see what happened here: "And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women." While outsiders dared not join, the Lord added more and more to Himself. The church that repels as this church repelled will attract as this church attracted. It will be the attraction of the Holy Spirit, and He will draw out those who really believe. All that is necessary is just to be New Testament Christians and a New Testament Church, and we will both repel and attract. It is a law of nature. The rose has its thorns, it both repels and attracts. Everywhere you look in the world of nature, you observe this double law at work. It is a law of the spiritual world too.
What is this repulsion? There is a false repulsion. Often we drive people away by our indifference, criticism, lack of love and zeal. We ought to be ashamed of it, confess that we are ugly and unattractive Christians, repent of our bigotry, coldness and hardness, and let the Lord make us winsome with the loveliness of Christ.
But there is a repulsion that goes with being a Christian. Here is a fine Christian girl, beautiful and charming in face, in mind, in spirit. When she comes into a gathering she is attractive. But there is something about her which makes it out of the question to use profanity in her presence, something which makes the rudely familiar keep at a distance. She doesn't have to say, "I will allow no foul language, no improper advances." People just don't curse and otherwise misbehave in the presence of such people. She repels while she attracts.
There ought to be that about every Christian when he walks into a gathering, that makes the unholy and profane subdued and respectful. There ought to be that about a church that would make the world never dream of rudely rushing into its fellowship. And Jesus Himself both attracts and repels. He is the Great Divider. He has attracted more people and driven more people away than any other character in all time. Once, when He had preached a crowd away, He asked the disciples: "Will you also go away?" All through His ministry men were being drawn and repelled. The young ruler was first drawn; then when the terms of discipleship were made known, he was repelled.
God help us, as Christians and churches, to recover the power of God among us until a holy awe shall rest upon us. God help us to deal with sin until men shall be afraid to lie to the Holy Spirit. When we do, outsiders will not dare to join us; the people will magnify us; believers will be added to the Lord.
There is a third characteristic of the New Testament that is quite out of style: IT WAS A SENSATIONAL CHURCH. There was something happening every minute. On the day of Pentecost the multitude gathered "amazed, confounded and perplexed." And from that day on, Jerusalem was kept in a turmoil on account of this new power let loose in the world which jails could not lock up nor swords kill nor death destroy. And wherever they went, these Christians stirred up the elements. Paul exceedingly troubled Philippi and created no small stir in Ephesus and won the name of a world upsetter. That a mere handful of plain witnesses, talking about One who was supposed to be dead and buried, should tackle the great Roman world in a head-on collision and come off winners is the most sensational thing in history.
Today we Christians are living, for the most part, on the momentum with which the New Testament Church started and on fresh waves of momentum started since through others who were sensational in their day. Savonarola and Luther and Knox and Wesley and Whitefield and Moody let nobody go to sleep in their vicinity. But of late anything out of the ordinary, anything likely to disturb the saints at ease in Zion, is frowned upon by a stiff and starched formalism "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null" (Tennyson). In reaction to that there has sprung up in the churches today an extreme sensationalism as bad as the thing it tries to correct. Wild free-lances, weird prophetic firebrands, erratic evangelists would try to remedy freezing in formalism by frying in emotionalism. So the battle rages, and the saints are so busy calling each other names that Satan gets scant attention.
But the counterfeit proves the genuine and the fact of a spurious sensationalism should not blind us to the truth. Someone has said that sensational preaching is the kind some preachers don't like because they can't do it. Be that as it may, we have dried up being "resolutionary," we need to become revolutionary. There is no reason why any band of Spirit-filled Christians should not arouse and excite and stir any community. If they didn't, something would be wrong. It is argued that the world is so much more Christian than it was in the New Testament days that we cannot expect such reactions today. The argument is beside the point. The days are darker instead of brighter and the contrast should be all the more pronounced. As for being Christian, our civilization has become infected with a mild rash of Christianity that has almost immunized it against the real thing. A real revival would be such a contrast with this weak Sunday-morning Laodiceanism that it would be a sensation indeed.
We glory these days in our churches being precise. Every "i" is dotted, every "t" is crossed. We are Disciples of the Great Happy Medium. Now, because there are extremes, our Lord would not have us be middle-of-the-roaders. He said He would spew us out of His mouth, not for being too hot, but for being lukewarm. He would rather have us on the wrong side of the fence than on the fence. Yet today the churches are on the fence. We do not commit ourselves boldly to anything. We are so cautious that half of what we say cancels the other half and we end up by having said nothing. We are salt without savor, there is no tang, no flavor, no relish about us, nothing to smack the lips over. Our services are dry and flat and tasteless, and when we try to pep them up with a little glorified "spizzerenctum" the result is embarrassing. We need a New Testament sensationalism -- not an emotional spree but the earth-shaking stir of a movement of the Holy Spirit. To have that, we need only to be New Testament Christians, then things will begin to happen. The most sensational thing I can imagine would be an outbreak of New Testament Christianity. It would create a sensation among the churches, for it would be a revival, an awaking out of sleep. Some churches have slept so long that the awakening would be as remarkable as Rip Van Winkle's. It would certainly create a sensation in this world, for the world has become so accustomed to our being comfortably hidden away in brick buildings on street corners that if a revival drove us out as at Pentecost to declare in the marketplaces the wonderful works of God, the general public would gather amazed, confounded, perplexed.
I am not advocating mere noise and uproar, but the Acts of the Apostles is an exciting book. And most of the denominations that now repose in such quiet dignity had a rather stirring start. The Baptists have subsided until one would hardly think that they were once considered heretical nuisances, so greatly did they disturb the peace. Surely the Methodists have a name for setting the woods on fire in days gone by. And even the Presbyterians, long synonymous with dignity, were once agitators second to none. Some of our denominationalists who fear that a holy stir in the house of God would be out of keeping with their tradition need to learn that it would be entirely in keeping -- they would merely be returning to what they started with! If any of our modern denominations had started with no more zeal than they now have, they wouldn't be living today to tell the tale!
Intolerant, unpopular, sensational, such was the New Testament Church. And so will we be if we dare to follow in that train. What kind of people were these New Testament Christians? They believed in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. They did not live on a memory; they believed in One who had died, had risen and was coming again. They were filled with the Spirit. They were living a supernatural life in this present world. They were all witnesses. To them a missionary was not somebody to visit the church now and then to talk about Africa or China. Every Christian was a missionary.
Let us try that today, and something will happen. Personal faith in a risen, coming Christ. The infilling of the Spirit, our duty and privilege, as we yield all, receive, trust, and obey. The daily practice of Galatians 2:20, living by the faith of the Son of God. Every Christian a missionary. Let a few in any church start living that, and the impact will shake the community. For that is the way it started.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article10711.shtml
It is very fashionable nowadays to ask, "What is wrong with the Church?" It is no new subject. There has always been something or other wrong with the professing church, and there have always been speakers aplenty to discuss it. Unfortunately, their speaking usually relieves only the speaker and not the situation. One is reminded of the soap-box orator in London some years ago. He was lambasting the government with a vengeance. Somebody asked a policeman: "Why don't you do something with him?" "Oh, leave 'im alone," the bobby replied, "It relieves 'im and it don't 'urt us."
I venture to suggest three characteristics of the New Testament Church that are out of style today. There are other marks of the Early Church that are also out of style, but one cannot cover everything in one message. I think that if we seriously considered these lost characteristics and recovered them we would be a long way toward answering the question, "What is wrong with the Church?"
The New Testament Church was an intolerant church. At once we throw ourselves open to a broadside of protest. "Intolerant" is a scandalous word to use these days, for if there is anything that is in style among our "progressive" churches it is that word "tolerance." You would think that intolerance was the unpardonable sin. We are majoring as never in all church history on being broad-minded. That we have become so broad we have become also pitifully shallow never seems to disturb us. We must "broaden or bust." Of course, some experts in tolerance can be amazingly intolerant of those who do not share their broad-mindedness, but that does not disturb them either.
There is, of course, a false, pharasaic intolerance that has no place in a true church. And one encounters it again and again among conservative Christians. It has brought about the remark that the modernists are arid and the fundamentalists are acrid, that the former lack clarity and the latter charity. It has nicknamed the fundamentalists "feudamentalists" and gotten them a reputation for spending so much time sniping at each other that they have little time left to go after the devil.
But there is a proper intolerance, and the New Testament Church had it. They were intolerant of any way of salvation except Jesus Christ. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). That makes it straight and narrow, and it isn't what you are hearing in some localities these days. You are hearing that Jesus is the best way but that other ways are good and will lead to God just the same. Union meetings of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews create the impression that a general faith in God is enough without specific faith in Christ. Now, that cannot be true if no man comes to the Father but by Christ. The devils believe that there is one God and tremble: men believe it and do not even tremble, but expect to reach heaven by theism instead of by Calvary.
The New Testament Church was also intolerant of anything that threatened to compromise this Gospel of No Other Name. In Galatia men tried to mix in a little legalism, and in Colosse they were slipping in a bit of false mysticism -- and Paul would have none of it. He could have said nothing about it. I am sure that some of the false teachers must have accused him of seeing bugaboos and hobgoblins. He could have told Timothy to play ball with the apostates of his day, but, instead, he wrote, "From such turn away." He advised Titus to reject a heretic after the first and second admonition, which sounds uncomfortably intolerant. And even the gentle John forbad hospitality to those who abode not in the doctrine of Christ, asserting that "he that bids him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds." To be sure, we are not advised to bawl him out and throw stones after him until he is out of sight: but neither is there any encouragement for that fashionable modern fellowship with unbelievers.
The New Testament Church was intolerant of sin in its midst. When serious trouble first showed up in Ananias and Sapphira it was dealt with in sudden and certain terms. When immorality cropped out in Corinth Paul delivered the offender to the devil for the destruction of his flesh. It was in line with our Lord's teaching on discipline in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew. To be sure, it was to be done in love and tenderness, and the brother overtaken in a fault was to be restored by the spiritual ones, and Paul was quick to recommend the restoration of the Corinthian brother. But, still, sin was not to be glossed over and excused as we condone it today in our churches until liars, gamblers, drunkards, and divorcees fill prominent places in Sunday schools and on boards and have never as much as heard that we must be clean who bear the vessels of the Lord. We have let the camel get his foot in the door and then his head, until now the whole camel is inside and along with him other animals far more unsavory. Peter added even hogs and dogs to our spiritual zoology, and the lambs today are so mixed with every other species that what was once a sheepfold has become a zoo. Our Lord warned us that the shepherd who did not stand his ground when the wolves appeared was only a hireling. We are bidden to feed His sheep but not to feed wolves. I grant you that it is often a complicated problem and can be handled only on one's knees. But we are paying an awful price today for our sweet tolerance of sin within the Church. If the church of the Acts had overlooked iniquity and by-passed evil and smilingly looked the other way while the devil sneaked into every phase of her life as we have done today, Christianity would have died in infancy.
The New Testament Church had a healthy, holy intolerance. It got somewhere because it started out on a narrow road and stuck to it. It might easily have taken up a dozen wide boulevards and ended in destruction. We face the peril of the wide gate and the broad way today, and it tantalizes us all the more because "many enter through it." We were told a long time ago that "few there be" who take the S. and N., the Straight and Narrow. We Americans especially are gregarious; we like to run with the crowd. We had rather be called almost anything on earth than narrow; yet our Lord chose the adjective, and faithfulness to Him will prove that it still fits today.
I am sure that there were those who called the Early Church "exclusive," and predicted that it would never get anywhere until it became inclusive. "Exclusive" is another word that is anathema today and has been shoved into the limbo of the outmoded, along with "intolerant" and "narrow." But the New Testament Church was the most exclusive fellowship on earth. It was not just a society of people with good intentions. It was not a club for improving the old Adam. It was a fellowship of people who believed in Jesus Christ as the one and only Saviour. It seemed not to have a chance in the face of the great Roman world. It could easily have let down the bars and taken in all sorts of religiously minded folk, but it stuck to "Jesus Only." A river may look very lovely spread out all over a marsh, but to generate power it must narrow itself. We have endeavored to spread out the river today. We have sacrificed depth for width and instead of a power dam we have a stagnant swamp.
In the second place, the New Testament Church was not only intolerant, narrow, exclusive. IT WAS A REPELLENT CHURCH. Instead of attracting everybody, it repelled. In the fourth chapter of Acts the church was really going places for God. It was a great hour but dangerous. Could the church stand success? There is a turn in the story with the fifth chapter. It begins "But . . . " Ananias and Sapphira appear, trouble has arisen in the midst. There were plenty of liars in Jerusalem but these were in the church! But by the grace of God the church rose to the occasion and cleaned house. Ananias and Sapphira were carried out dead and the church rolled on. We read, "And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; and they were all with one accord on Solomon's porch." Here is the church in the full bloom of her power: a Spirit-filled church, a wonder-working (not a wondering!) church; a church that stirred up the devil.
Then we read that there were three reactions:
Even though people admired them a lot, outsiders were wary about joining them. On the other hand, those who put their trust in the Master were added right and left, men and women both.
People didn't join this church carelessly. They were afraid to. There was a holy awe that kept Tom, Dick, and Harry at a distance. People didn't rush into this fellowship just because it was the nice thing to do. It meant something to unite with this crowd. There was a holy repulsion, and I know of nothing that the church needs more today. It is the last thing we think we need. We are always trying to attract. Our programs, prizes, picnics, and pulpit pyrotechnics are aimed at drawing the people in. Here was a church that made people stand back! We have catered to the world, we have let the world slap the church on the back in coarse familiarity. Here was a church that prospered by repelling!
You will observe that all this followed on the heels of the death of Ananias and Sapphira. If the church took a stand today on sins within; if we thundered out, as Peter did here, against lying to the Holy Spirit, it would make the world stand at a respectful distance, and the fear of God would fall on a generation that laughs at the church. What was the sin of Ananias and Sapphira? They pretended to make a full consecration which was not real. And are not our churches filled with men and women who sing, "I surrender all," when they have not surrendered anything? The church is cluttered with people who should never have joined. She already has too many of the kind she has. We need a holy repulsion. You don't have to be different to be a church-member now. There is little about the average church to make men stand back in reverence. In other days we at least had church discipline. I can recall the old Saturday church meetings, when Ananias and Sapphira were dealt with. Some mistakes were made but there was a healthy regard for the sanctity of the church. When the church takes a stand, it repels careless "joiners."
But someone asks, "What would people think if we took such a stand?" Let us see what happened here: "But the people magnified them." The church had favor with all the people (Acts 2:47). The church that stands in the power of the Spirit wins the respect of the people. We have driven them away in trying to attract them. We have lost favor in trying to win favor. The world is sick and disgusted with the church making a clown of itself, trying to talk the slang of this age, running third-rate amusement parlors, playing bingo and putting on rummage sales. The church, it has been said, is not running a show-boat but a life-boat, and we make ourselves ridiculous in trying to compete with the world. The preacher and church that stand for God and righteousness will be magnified.
When judgment fell on Ananias and Sapphira the world sat up and took notice. Today we coddle and excuse our sins, call weakness what God calls wickedness. We shelter sin in the Church, and when a preacher would cry out against it he is advised, "Don't be too hard, nobody is perfect," and is given a dressing-down from the text, "Judge not that you be not judged." We have let down the bars until anybody can get into a church and nobody ever gets out. If we raised the New Testament standard it would stop the rush of superficial disciples and win respect where now there is ridicule.
"But nobody would ever join!" do we hear? Let us see what happened here: "And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women." While outsiders dared not join, the Lord added more and more to Himself. The church that repels as this church repelled will attract as this church attracted. It will be the attraction of the Holy Spirit, and He will draw out those who really believe. All that is necessary is just to be New Testament Christians and a New Testament Church, and we will both repel and attract. It is a law of nature. The rose has its thorns, it both repels and attracts. Everywhere you look in the world of nature, you observe this double law at work. It is a law of the spiritual world too.
What is this repulsion? There is a false repulsion. Often we drive people away by our indifference, criticism, lack of love and zeal. We ought to be ashamed of it, confess that we are ugly and unattractive Christians, repent of our bigotry, coldness and hardness, and let the Lord make us winsome with the loveliness of Christ.
But there is a repulsion that goes with being a Christian. Here is a fine Christian girl, beautiful and charming in face, in mind, in spirit. When she comes into a gathering she is attractive. But there is something about her which makes it out of the question to use profanity in her presence, something which makes the rudely familiar keep at a distance. She doesn't have to say, "I will allow no foul language, no improper advances." People just don't curse and otherwise misbehave in the presence of such people. She repels while she attracts.
There ought to be that about every Christian when he walks into a gathering, that makes the unholy and profane subdued and respectful. There ought to be that about a church that would make the world never dream of rudely rushing into its fellowship. And Jesus Himself both attracts and repels. He is the Great Divider. He has attracted more people and driven more people away than any other character in all time. Once, when He had preached a crowd away, He asked the disciples: "Will you also go away?" All through His ministry men were being drawn and repelled. The young ruler was first drawn; then when the terms of discipleship were made known, he was repelled.
God help us, as Christians and churches, to recover the power of God among us until a holy awe shall rest upon us. God help us to deal with sin until men shall be afraid to lie to the Holy Spirit. When we do, outsiders will not dare to join us; the people will magnify us; believers will be added to the Lord.
There is a third characteristic of the New Testament that is quite out of style: IT WAS A SENSATIONAL CHURCH. There was something happening every minute. On the day of Pentecost the multitude gathered "amazed, confounded and perplexed." And from that day on, Jerusalem was kept in a turmoil on account of this new power let loose in the world which jails could not lock up nor swords kill nor death destroy. And wherever they went, these Christians stirred up the elements. Paul exceedingly troubled Philippi and created no small stir in Ephesus and won the name of a world upsetter. That a mere handful of plain witnesses, talking about One who was supposed to be dead and buried, should tackle the great Roman world in a head-on collision and come off winners is the most sensational thing in history.
Today we Christians are living, for the most part, on the momentum with which the New Testament Church started and on fresh waves of momentum started since through others who were sensational in their day. Savonarola and Luther and Knox and Wesley and Whitefield and Moody let nobody go to sleep in their vicinity. But of late anything out of the ordinary, anything likely to disturb the saints at ease in Zion, is frowned upon by a stiff and starched formalism "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null" (Tennyson). In reaction to that there has sprung up in the churches today an extreme sensationalism as bad as the thing it tries to correct. Wild free-lances, weird prophetic firebrands, erratic evangelists would try to remedy freezing in formalism by frying in emotionalism. So the battle rages, and the saints are so busy calling each other names that Satan gets scant attention.
But the counterfeit proves the genuine and the fact of a spurious sensationalism should not blind us to the truth. Someone has said that sensational preaching is the kind some preachers don't like because they can't do it. Be that as it may, we have dried up being "resolutionary," we need to become revolutionary. There is no reason why any band of Spirit-filled Christians should not arouse and excite and stir any community. If they didn't, something would be wrong. It is argued that the world is so much more Christian than it was in the New Testament days that we cannot expect such reactions today. The argument is beside the point. The days are darker instead of brighter and the contrast should be all the more pronounced. As for being Christian, our civilization has become infected with a mild rash of Christianity that has almost immunized it against the real thing. A real revival would be such a contrast with this weak Sunday-morning Laodiceanism that it would be a sensation indeed.
We glory these days in our churches being precise. Every "i" is dotted, every "t" is crossed. We are Disciples of the Great Happy Medium. Now, because there are extremes, our Lord would not have us be middle-of-the-roaders. He said He would spew us out of His mouth, not for being too hot, but for being lukewarm. He would rather have us on the wrong side of the fence than on the fence. Yet today the churches are on the fence. We do not commit ourselves boldly to anything. We are so cautious that half of what we say cancels the other half and we end up by having said nothing. We are salt without savor, there is no tang, no flavor, no relish about us, nothing to smack the lips over. Our services are dry and flat and tasteless, and when we try to pep them up with a little glorified "spizzerenctum" the result is embarrassing. We need a New Testament sensationalism -- not an emotional spree but the earth-shaking stir of a movement of the Holy Spirit. To have that, we need only to be New Testament Christians, then things will begin to happen. The most sensational thing I can imagine would be an outbreak of New Testament Christianity. It would create a sensation among the churches, for it would be a revival, an awaking out of sleep. Some churches have slept so long that the awakening would be as remarkable as Rip Van Winkle's. It would certainly create a sensation in this world, for the world has become so accustomed to our being comfortably hidden away in brick buildings on street corners that if a revival drove us out as at Pentecost to declare in the marketplaces the wonderful works of God, the general public would gather amazed, confounded, perplexed.
I am not advocating mere noise and uproar, but the Acts of the Apostles is an exciting book. And most of the denominations that now repose in such quiet dignity had a rather stirring start. The Baptists have subsided until one would hardly think that they were once considered heretical nuisances, so greatly did they disturb the peace. Surely the Methodists have a name for setting the woods on fire in days gone by. And even the Presbyterians, long synonymous with dignity, were once agitators second to none. Some of our denominationalists who fear that a holy stir in the house of God would be out of keeping with their tradition need to learn that it would be entirely in keeping -- they would merely be returning to what they started with! If any of our modern denominations had started with no more zeal than they now have, they wouldn't be living today to tell the tale!
Intolerant, unpopular, sensational, such was the New Testament Church. And so will we be if we dare to follow in that train. What kind of people were these New Testament Christians? They believed in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. They did not live on a memory; they believed in One who had died, had risen and was coming again. They were filled with the Spirit. They were living a supernatural life in this present world. They were all witnesses. To them a missionary was not somebody to visit the church now and then to talk about Africa or China. Every Christian was a missionary.
Let us try that today, and something will happen. Personal faith in a risen, coming Christ. The infilling of the Spirit, our duty and privilege, as we yield all, receive, trust, and obey. The daily practice of Galatians 2:20, living by the faith of the Son of God. Every Christian a missionary. Let a few in any church start living that, and the impact will shake the community. For that is the way it started.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article10711.shtml
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Emperors of world.
Emperor world kingdom Egypt Hittite Empire Assyrian Babylonian Persian Macedonian Roman Byzantine Sassanid Caliphate Seljuk Crusader Saladin Mongol Ottoman European Colonialism Nation State Border Boundaries Independence Jerusalem Baghdad
All Noble Things Are Difficult
By Oswald Chambers
'Enter ye in at the strait gate . . because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way...'
Matthew 7:13-14
If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all noble things are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but the difficulty of it does not make us faint and cave in, it rouses us up to overcome. Do we so appreciate the marvellous salvation of Jesus Christ that we are our utmost for His highest?
God saves men by His sovereign grace through the Atonement of Jesus; He works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure; but we have to work out that salvation in practical living. If once we start on the basis of His Redemption to do what He commands, we find that we can do it. If we fail, it is because we have not practised. The crisis will reveal whether we have been practising or not. If we obey the Spirit of God and practise in our physical life what God has put in us by His Spirit, then when the crisis comes, we shall find that our own nature as well as the grace of God will stand by us.
Thank God He does give us difficult things to do! His salvation is a glad thing, but it is also a heroic, holy thing. It tests us for all we are worth. Jesus is bringing many "sons" unto glory, and God will not shield us from the requirements of a son. God's grace turns out men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, not milk sops. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline to live the noble life of a disciple of Jesus in actual things. It is always necessary to make an effort to be noble.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9934.shtml
A CAREER-AND CHRIST
By A.W. Tozer
It is a beautiful New Testament story that tells us of Lydia of Philippi, a career woman in her own right, long before there were laws and proclamations to set women free. A seller of purple, Lydia traveled to the market of her day, and undoubtedly she had found freedom and satisfaction in that era when women were not counted at all. But Lydia heard the Apostle Paul tell of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the Lord opened her heart.
In Christ she found an eternal answer, which career and position had never been able to give. Now, about conditions today. Our society has set women free to be just as bad as the men-and just as miserable. We have set them free to swear and curse and to set their own morals. Politically, women are now free to vote just as blindly as the men do. But I hope women today will find what Lydia found: that their careers will lack the word "eternal" until they find their answer in the eternal Christ, our Lord Jesus!
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4683.shtml
Treasure in Earthen Vessels
By Alan Redpath
The principle of the world is "self-glorification," and the principle of the Christian is "self-crucifixion." The principle of the world is "exalt yourself," and the principle of the Christian is "crucify yourself." The principle of men is greatness, bigness, pomp, and show; the principle of the cross is death. Therefore, whenever a man has seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ . . . at once he comes right into a head-on collision within his own personal living, with all of his principles and motives upon which he has lived until this moment. . . . if there is to be a continual manifestation of Holy Spirit life, there must be a constant submission to the crucifixion of the flesh, not simply sometimes, but always.
. . . . I see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, in the measure in which I am prepared to die. . . Why is it that so many Christians behave like kindergarten children? Because they have not seen His face!
. . . And the cost in the Christian life. . . . Deep down in the Christian's life, always and all the time, there is to be a "no" to every demand that the flesh may make for recognition, and every demand that the flesh may make for approval, and every demand that the flesh may make for vindication. Always the Christian must bear about in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus (Blessings Out of Buffetings, p. 37-38).
http://articles.ochristian.com/article370.shtml
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Contentment
By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
"I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content" (Phil. 4:11).
Paul, denied of every comfort, wrote the above words in his dungeon.
A story is told of a king who went into his garden one morning, and found everything withered and dying. He asked the oak that stood near the gate what the trouble was. He found it was sick of life and determined to die because it was not tall and beautiful like the pine. The pine was all out of heart because it could not bear grapes, like the vine. The vine was going to throw its life away because it could not stand erect and have as fine fruit as the peach tree. The geranium was fretting because it was not tall and fragrant like the lilac; and so on all through the garden. Coming to a heart's-ease, he found its bright face lifted as cheery as ever. "Well, heart's-ease, I'm glad, amidst all this discouragement, to find one brave little flower. You do not seem to be the least disheartened." "No, I am not of much account, but I thought that if you wanted an oak, or a pine, or a peach tree, or a lilac, you would have planted one; but as I knew you wanted a heart's-ease, I am determined to be the best little heart's-ease that I can."
"Others may do a greater work,
But you have your part to do;
And no one in all God's heritage
Can do it so well as you."
They who are God's without reserve, are in every state content; for they will only what He wills, and desire to do for Him whatever He desires them to do; they strip themselves of everything, and in this nakedness find all things restored an hundredfold.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article9181.shtml
LIVING TO GOD IN SMALL THINGS
Sermons for the New Life 15
LIVING TO GOD IN SMALL THINGS
By Horace Bushnell
Luke xvi. 10.-"He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much."
A READINESS to do some great thing is not peculiar to Naaman the Syrian. There are many Christians who can never find a place large enough to do their duty. They must needs strain after great changes, and their works must utter themselves by a loud report. Any reform in society, short of a revolution, any improvement in character, less radical than that of conversion, is too faint a work, in their view, to be much valued. Nor is it merely ambition, but often it is a truly christian zeal, guarded by no sufficient views of the less imposing matters of life, which betrays men into such impressions. If there be any thing, in fact, wherein the views of God and the impressions of men are apt to be at total variance, it is in respect to the solemnity and importance of ordinary duties. The hurtfulness of mistake here, is of course very great. Trying always to do great things, to have extraordinary occasions every day, or to produce extraordinary changes, when small ones are quite as much needed, ends, of course, in defeat and dissipation. It produces a sort of religion in the gross, which is no religion in particular. My text leads me to speak-
Of the importance of living to God on common occasions and in small things.
He that is faithful in that which is least, says the Saviour, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. This was a favorite sentiment with him. In his sermon on the mount, it was thus expressed-Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. And when he rebuked the Pharisees, in their tything of mint, anise, and cummin, he was careful to speak very guardedly-These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. It will instruct us in prosecuting this subject-
1. To notice how little we know concerning the relative importance of events and duties. We use the terms great and small in speaking of actions, occasions, plans, and duties, only in reference to the mere outward look and first impression. Some of the most latent agents and mean looking substances in nature, are yet the most operative; but yet, when we speak of natural objects, we call them great or small, not according to their operativeness, but according to size, count, report, or show. So it comes to pass, when we are classing actions, duties, or occasions, that we call a certain class great and another small, when really the latter are many fold more important and influential than the former. We may suppose, for illustration, two transactions in business, as different in their nominal amount as a million of dollars and a single dollar. The former we call a large transaction, the latter a small one. But God might reverse these terms. He would have no such thought as the counting of dollars. He would look, first of all, at the principle involved in the two cases. And here he would discover, not unlikely, that the nominally small one, owing to the nature of the transaction, or to the humble condition of the parties, or to their peculiar temper and disposition, took a deeper hold of their being, and did more to settle or unsettle great and everlasting principle, than the other. Next, perhaps, he would look at the consequences of the two transactions, as developed in the great future; and here he would perhaps discover that the one which seems to us the smaller, is the hinge of vastly greater consequences than the other. If the dollars had been sands of dust, they would not have had less weight in the divine judgment.
We are generally ignorant of the real significance of events, which we think we understand. Almost every person can recollect one or more instances, where the whole after-current of his life was turned by some single word, or some incident so trivial as scarcely to fix his notice at the time. On the other hand, many great crises of danger, many high and stirring occasions, in which, at the time, his total being was absorbed, have passed by, leaving no trace of effect on his permanent interests, and are well nigh vanished from his memory. The conversation of the stage-coach is often preparing results, which the solemn assembly and the most imposing and eloquent rites will fail to produce. What countryman, knowing the dairyman's daughter, could have suspected that she was living to a mightier purpose and result, than almost any person in the church of God, however eminent? The outward of occasions and duties is, in fact, almost no index of their importance; and our judgments concerning what is great and small, are without any certain validity. These terms. as we use them, are, in fact, only words of outward description, not words of definite measurement.
LIVING TO GOD IN SMALL THINGS
By Horace Bushnell
Luke xvi. 10.-"He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much."
A READINESS to do some great thing is not peculiar to Naaman the Syrian. There are many Christians who can never find a place large enough to do their duty. They must needs strain after great changes, and their works must utter themselves by a loud report. Any reform in society, short of a revolution, any improvement in character, less radical than that of conversion, is too faint a work, in their view, to be much valued. Nor is it merely ambition, but often it is a truly christian zeal, guarded by no sufficient views of the less imposing matters of life, which betrays men into such impressions. If there be any thing, in fact, wherein the views of God and the impressions of men are apt to be at total variance, it is in respect to the solemnity and importance of ordinary duties. The hurtfulness of mistake here, is of course very great. Trying always to do great things, to have extraordinary occasions every day, or to produce extraordinary changes, when small ones are quite as much needed, ends, of course, in defeat and dissipation. It produces a sort of religion in the gross, which is no religion in particular. My text leads me to speak-
Of the importance of living to God on common occasions and in small things.
He that is faithful in that which is least, says the Saviour, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. This was a favorite sentiment with him. In his sermon on the mount, it was thus expressed-Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. And when he rebuked the Pharisees, in their tything of mint, anise, and cummin, he was careful to speak very guardedly-These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. It will instruct us in prosecuting this subject-
1. To notice how little we know concerning the relative importance of events and duties. We use the terms great and small in speaking of actions, occasions, plans, and duties, only in reference to the mere outward look and first impression. Some of the most latent agents and mean looking substances in nature, are yet the most operative; but yet, when we speak of natural objects, we call them great or small, not according to their operativeness, but according to size, count, report, or show. So it comes to pass, when we are classing actions, duties, or occasions, that we call a certain class great and another small, when really the latter are many fold more important and influential than the former. We may suppose, for illustration, two transactions in business, as different in their nominal amount as a million of dollars and a single dollar. The former we call a large transaction, the latter a small one. But God might reverse these terms. He would have no such thought as the counting of dollars. He would look, first of all, at the principle involved in the two cases. And here he would discover, not unlikely, that the nominally small one, owing to the nature of the transaction, or to the humble condition of the parties, or to their peculiar temper and disposition, took a deeper hold of their being, and did more to settle or unsettle great and everlasting principle, than the other. Next, perhaps, he would look at the consequences of the two transactions, as developed in the great future; and here he would perhaps discover that the one which seems to us the smaller, is the hinge of vastly greater consequences than the other. If the dollars had been sands of dust, they would not have had less weight in the divine judgment.
We are generally ignorant of the real significance of events, which we think we understand. Almost every person can recollect one or more instances, where the whole after-current of his life was turned by some single word, or some incident so trivial as scarcely to fix his notice at the time. On the other hand, many great crises of danger, many high and stirring occasions, in which, at the time, his total being was absorbed, have passed by, leaving no trace of effect on his permanent interests, and are well nigh vanished from his memory. The conversation of the stage-coach is often preparing results, which the solemn assembly and the most imposing and eloquent rites will fail to produce. What countryman, knowing the dairyman's daughter, could have suspected that she was living to a mightier purpose and result, than almost any person in the church of God, however eminent? The outward of occasions and duties is, in fact, almost no index of their importance; and our judgments concerning what is great and small, are without any certain validity. These terms. as we use them, are, in fact, only words of outward description, not words of definite measurement.
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