The New Things of God

The Revelation of Jesus Christ: Chapter 51 - The New Things of God
By Horatius Bonar


And the one sitting on the throne said, "Look, I am making all things new!" And then he said to me, "Write this down, for these words are true and faithful."--Revelation 21:5.

There are many 'new things' spoken of in Scripture, some of more, and some of less importance. Of the less important we have such as these--Samson's new cords (Judges 15:13); David's new cart for the ark (2 Samuel 6:7); the new sword of the giant who sought to slay David (2 Samuel 21:16); Elisha's new cruse (2 Kings 2:20) the new tongues of Pentecost (Matthew 16:17); Joseph's new tomb (Matthew 27:60). These are not so directly connected with things spiritual and eternal, and so we may call them of less importance; yet they have all their important lessons.

But let us take up the following as specially the new things of God--

I. The new TESTAMENT or covenant (Matthew 26:28). That which was old has vanished away. It was insufficient; it could not help the sinner; it said nothing of forgiveness. But the new covenant is all a sinner needs; it comes at once with a free pardon; it presents a work done for the sinner, not a work for the sinner to do. The motto or theme of the new covenant is, 'Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.'

II. The new MAN (Ephesians 4:24). This seems to correspond with the 'new creature' (2 Corinthians 5:17); with the 'new heart' (Ezekiel 18:31); with the 'new spirit' (Ezekiel 11:9); with the 'heart of flesh' (Ezekiel 36:26); with the 'new birth' (John 3:3); and the being 'begotten again' (1 Peter 1:3). It supposes the destruction or removal of the old man and the creation of the new--this new thing being the workmanship of God, the production of the Holy Spirit. Newness of nature, or heart, of life, of words, of the entire being, is the basis of all religion and true worship.

III. The new WAY (Hebrews 10:19). The approach or access to God by the sinner is said to be by a 'new and living way'--that way being Christ Himself, for through Him we have access by on Spirit to the Father. It is a new way in contrast with Adam's old way; a new way, because newly made by Him who had newly died; a way into the holiest; a way through the veil, by means of the blood. All God's dealings with the sinner are on a new footing, that of free love, simple grace. It is a free way, a sufficient way, an open way, a perfect way. He who walks thereon is safe; for the way not only leads to life, but is the life. Yes, life and truth are in Him who is the way; for Christ is all and in all.

IV. The new SONG (Psalm 33:3; Revelation 5:9). Every new day brings with it a new song; or rather it brings materials for many new songs, which we should be always singing. Our whole life should be full of new songs. Yet the old songs are not thereby made obsolete; they do not grow tame or unmeaning. As the old songs of a land are always fresh and sweet, so is it with the old songs of faith. They never come amiss, and they help us with the new. These new songs have to do with the past--for often, in looking into the past, we get materials for a new song--with the present, and with the future. They are connected with ourselves, our families, with the Church, with our nation, with the work of God just now, with resurrection, with the restitution of all things, with the glory, the new Jerusalem, and the new creation. It is specially with the last that the new song of the Apocalypse is connected,

The Testing of Self-Interest in the Servant

Behold My Servant: Chapter 7 - The Testing of Self-Interest in the Servant
By T. Austin-Sparks


Reading: 1 Kings 18:36-40; 19:2-5,9,15-16; Mal. 4:5-6; Matt. 3:1-6; 11:2-14; 14:3.

Elijah and John the Baptist are in view in these passages of Scripture, and much for our help can be learned from their experiences.

A Vital Ministry in a Time of Transition
In the first place, we must take account of their ministries. The two men are brought together in a mysterious identification by the Lord Jesus, and from various fragments it is quite clear that their ministries were one in principle and nature; that is, in a day of fairly general spiritual smallness and weakness, these two servants of God were His instrument and vessel for making a way and a place for Himself in greater fulness. They were way-makers for the Lord, pioneers and pathfinders for His larger purposes and desires. In the familiar words used by John - "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). That was the key to the ministry of both Elijah and John the Baptist - the increase of the Lord amongst His people.

Both lived in a time of transition. The principle of transition is clear, firstly, in that Elijah is brought over into full view at the very end of Malachi's prophecies, at the close of the Old Testament - an end-time, a period of transition unto the Lord's coming: in that case, of course, His first coming. But I do not think that what the Lord said about Elijah, in Malachi and later, was exhausted by the first coming of the Lord; the great and terrible day of the Lord is still to come. We will not enlarge too much on details, but be content to note that that time of transition was governed by the ministry of both these men, and was marked by the gathering out of a real people from among the professing people of the Lord. Malachi makes that perfectly clear - "Then they that feared the Lord spake one with another; and the Lord hearkened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, even mine own possession, in the day that I do make" (Mal. 3:16-17). 

Out from the professing, religious realm there is seen in these words to be a true people for the Lord. Undoubtedly that was the mark of John's ministry, for tradition, formalism, legalism were the dominant features of religion in his day, and it was against these that he hurled his weight to secure a people unto Christ in fulness, in utterness. He sought a transition from one spiritual state to another, and, in the light of a change of dispensation, to secure a people wholly for the Lord. That wants dwelling upon very much more fully, but I think that is enough to give us the clue to the ministry of these men, and to relate them in a vital way to our own day - another end-time, transition period that is surely ushering in another coming of the Lord, and that also is characterised by the need for the gathering out of a real people from among those who profess to be the Lord's. We may expect that what was true in the experience of Elijah and John in their day will in principle be found in God's dealings with instruments of His choice today.

Preparation in Secret
It becomes clear then that for such a great purpose - to make a way and to make room for the Lord - God had and has His instruments, known to Himself, and secretly under His hand, being prepared. Elijah comes on to the scene mysteriously, almost out of nowhere, after deep secret preparation and discipline. John has spent all his life in the wilderness waiting for the day of his appearing to Israel. Something has been going on in secret. God has had these men in hand in deep preparation, vessels to meet this particular need in the time of transition - transition from a state which the Lord can no longer accept as answering to His known will, to a state which will satisfy Him. He must have a vessel for such a purpose. It may be individuals, as it often is, but it has also through the ages proved to be a corporate vessel, a company of the Lord's people prepared in this way. These instruments, known and secured by God in secret, have, in a secret history with Him, been learning to know the Lord as their heavenly sustenance. Elijah, at a time when earth could not provide any sustenance, was sustained from heaven. John the Baptist, in the wilderness for many years, where he had to know the Lord in loneliness and apart from men, was having to learn the Lord as his heavenly life and his heavenly provision. Such is the preparation, the equipment, of any vessel to serve God in this greater purpose of His heart.

The Transfiguration Of Christ By Robert Murray McCheyne

By Robert Murray McCheyne

      
THE TRANSFIGURATION OF CHRIST SEEMS ordinarily to be but little understood. It is like Gethsemane, darkness hangs around it. Gethsemane showed the deepness of his sorrow; mount Tabor showed the height of his glory, which passeth knowledge.

      Let us go over the different things mentioned in these words.

      
First, let us observe the favourite three: 'And it came to pass, about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John, and James, and went up into a mountain to pray' (verse 28). It is interesting to notice that these three disciples were often peculiarly favoured of the Lord. Christ seems to have exercised peculiar sovereignty to the three.

      The first time that he distinguished them was when he raised the ruler's daughter. 'While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead; why troublest thou the Master any farther? ... And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James' (Mark 5:35-37). You will notice that these three were the same three. He took them into the ruler's house and showed them his power to raise the dead.

      The second time that he distinguished them is in the passage before us. A little before he said: 'But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of God' (verse 27). And eight days after he took them up to the mount, and gave them a glimpse of the coming glory.

      
The next time was when in the garden of Gethsemane. When he wanted some to be witnesses of his agony, he took with him Peter, James and John. O brethren! it was a great honour to be permitted to see his glory; but oh! it was more glorious to see his agony.

      
There have always been men in the Church greatly honoured by God. Some are not only of the twelve, but of the three. There was a Noah, and there was a Daniel. You remember, God says, ' Daniel, a man greatly beloved' (Daniel 10: 11). And there was an Abraham, who was called 'the friend of God' (James 2:23). There have been many in the Church who have been eminent among the twelve, but it is far better to be among the three.

     
 And this is quite different from worldly covetousness - it is quite different from mere worldly ambition. It is not like the wish of Zebedee's wife for her children; she wanted them to have more worldly honour and glory than the rest. But oh! to covet Christ, to be like Christ - this is to be happy. Mr. Edwards says, 'Suppose there never were to be but one in the world at a time, who is properly a complete Christian, in all respects of a right stamp, having Christianity shining in its true lustre, appearing amiable from whatever part, and under what character so ever viewed. Resolved to act just as I would do, as if I strove with all my might to be that one.'

      
Ah, brethren, resolve to be an eminent Christian. There are not many Christians nowadays that see far into Gethsemane's gloom - they are not many who have glimpses of Tabor's glory. One star of the first magnitude gives more glory to God than a dozen lesser stars do. One eminent minister gives more honour to Christ than a dozen other ministers do. One eminent Christian gives more honour to God than a dozen others. Covet earnestly, brethren, to reflect all Christ's image.

      
The next point to consider is the prayer meeting on the hill. Matthew says, 'He went up into a mountain apart.' Luke says, it was 'to pray'. Christ loved to pray alone. We are told by Mark that he arose a great while before day and went out to pray. We are told by Matthew that after feeding the five thousand, he went up into a mountain apart to pray; and we are told by Luke at another time, when he was beset by his enemies, he went into the wilderness to pray; and we are told at another time by Luke, when he was to ordain apostles, he went out, and continued all night in prayer. This shows that Christ loved secret prayer.

 Ah, you are no Christian, if you do not love secret prayer. O brethren! a prayerless man is an unconverted man. Disguise it as you may; defend it as you can; explain it as you like; but a prayerless man is a Christless man. Christ loved the prayer meeting. We are told in the 18th chapter of Luke, 1st verse, of Christ praying with his disciples. Another example is where we have been reading - the 17th of John. O how wonderful to have heard Christ pray!

FIRE!

By E.M. Bounds


Zeal is a contagious, but not a popular, element. Our fathers took their tea piping hot; we take ours iced. Iced Christianity is more popular and tasteful than iced tea. We can endure in our churches enough warmth to take the chill off, but more than this is offensive. We have added many good elements to our preaching, but these cannot make up for the loss of fervor.

The average mind can only be moved to action by a flame. Some men may pull through to heaven on a cold collar, but they are the exception. A dwindling flame destroys the vital and aggressive forces in church life. God must be represented by a fiery church or he is not truly represented. God is all on fire, and his church, if it be like Him, must also be aflame with the great and eternal interests of religion. Zeal need not be fussy to be consuming and forceful. Christ was as far removed as possible from nervous excitability, the very opposite of intolerant or clamorous zeal, and yet the zeal of God's house consumed him.

The lack of ardor in Christian profession or action is a sure sign of the want of depth and intensity. The lack of fire is the sure sign of the lack of God's presence. To abate fervor is to retire God. God can tolerate many things in the way of infirmity or error. He can pardon much when one is repentant, but two things are intolerable to Him, insincerity and lukewarmness. Lack of heart and lack of heat are the things that He loathes. "I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth," is God's judgment on our lack of fire in the Church. Fire is the motor that moves the Christian life. Christian principles that are not aflame have neither force nor perfume. Flame is the wing by which faith ascends, and fervency is the soul of prayer. Love is kindled in a flame, and fire is the air that true religion breathes. It feeds on fire. Christianity can stand anything better than a feeble flame.

Christian character needs to be set on fire. Lack of heat makes more infidels than lack of faith. Not to be in fiery earnest about the things of heaven is not to be about them at all. The fiery souls are the ones that win in the heavenly fight. Nothing short of red hot can keep the glow of heaven in these chilly times. We must grasp the live coal and covet the consuming flame.

The Coming of the Kingdom in Power

By T. Austin-Sparks

      Reading: Matt. 16:28; 17:1-7.

      Though we are familiar with this incident of the transfiguration of Jesus, I have always had a feeling that we have not really grasped strongly enough the significance of it. We view it objectively as something that happened in the life of our Lord here, perhaps the most wonderful thing, and we leave it there and fail to realize that there is a tremendous challenge in it, and that it means something of very great importance and significance in the economy of God. Furthermore, we fail to realize that this is the focal point of all the Scriptures. From the beginning of the Bible up to this point, and from this point onwards, everything past and future meets here, is focused upon this, and this therefore contains that which is of tremendous account. The Lord Jesus said with emphasis, "There are some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." Pentecost was the fulfilment of that, but the transfiguration was the meaning and nature of that. The two go together -- the transfiguration and the coming of the Holy Spirit as He came on the day of Pentecost.

      A Kingdom Trio

      Now, in order to get right to the meaning of this, let us note that it says -- and Jesus was always very deliberate and quite calculated in what He did, there was nothing casual about Him in word or in deed -- "Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart." Peter and James and John more than any others of the disciples of our Lord were those who had the great Kingdom complex. They were looking for the coming of the Kingdom. They had all the Jewish concept of the Kingdom and all the Jewish expectation of the Kingdom, and from various ejaculations of theirs it is quite clear that they were thinking in terms of the Israelitish kingdom coming in relation to Jesus. "Lord, dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6). 

That is their mentality, their expectation, their hope. We can say this trio was a Kingdom trio in mentality and concept and expectation. It was as though all this system of truth or teaching about the Kingdom was focused upon and gathered up into those three men.

      An Object Lesson of the Kingdom

      And Jesus took them deliberately apart up into the high mountain and was transfigured before them. They were the spectators of this. They were the ones who had this unique experience. Jesus was giving them an object lesson of the Kingdom. If you look at all the features you will see how truly that was so. Jesus had said -- "the Son of man coming in his kingdom". That is the first significant thing. "The Son of man in his kingdom". That is relationship to man, that is man being brought in according to God. This Kingdom is the Kingdom which God intended man to have, to be man's Kingdom. It is the Kingdom of the Son of man as representing man according to God's mind.

      The Kingdom for Man

      And so at once we are taken right back to the beginning of the Bible, and we see what God intended regarding the first man -- to give him the Kingdom. "Thou makest him to have dominion" (Psa. 8:6). The Kingdom was the great idea in God's mind in the creation of man, that all things should be under his feet. But that first man missed the Kingdom or lost the Kingdom, and it was not only a matter of government. Why he lost the Kingdom was because he became another kind of man, for this Kingdom belongs to a certain kind of man, and Adam, the first for whom it was intended, changed his nature by disobedience, by unbelief, and so he lost it. Another, the last Adam, comes in and recovers what Adam lost or missed -- the Kingdom.

The Moral Perfection of the Kingdom

But He shows what kind of a man is the Kingdom man, and you have two things here in this presentation of the transfigured Son of man. One is moral perfection. Here He is presented in all the purity and perfection of moral victory, tested, proved in every way in which a man can be tested and proved, emerging triumphant after all. There is nothing more really to be done as far as He personally is concerned. If He descends the mountain and goes to the cross, that is not on His own account. That is to bring the other men into the Kingdom, but on His own account all is done. He has reached the point of moral perfection, and so perfection is written large in the very description of Him here: His garments and His face, the picture of moral and spiritual perfection.

      The Glory of the Kingdom

The other thing is glory, and when you put those two things together, you know what the Kingdom is. It is spiritual and moral perfection in manhood issuing in glory. That is a word very difficult to understand. Of course, we usually do associate with the word "glory" the accompaniments of this transfiguration -- bright, glistening, fierce light. That is quite true in this sense -- if you find a person who is really by the grace of God overcoming, they are up against something that calls for much grace, maybe in themselves, some difficulty, some handicap, some discouragement, something that is so calculated to make them anything but triumphant Christians; or it may be in some other person with whom they have to live and work, it may be in the home, it may be in the business, it may be anywhere, and these people are an awful trial to them, but if you see these people triumphant through the grace of God over those trials, you do see something about them that is glorious. You can even see it in their countenance. How different they are from the people who are under their troubles. Their face tells whether they are over or under. There is something you recognize there of glory. It is a very faint illustration of this thing. Jesus has triumphed, reached the point of absolute victory on all matters, and the glory follows. I do believe that when we are glorified together with Him, there will be something very light about us -- I do not mean frivolous. We shall be radiant -- that is the word -- radiant people. Heaven is going to be a glorious place in this sense -- that everybody is going to be so radiant.

      Here is Christ the Son of man radiant, and the basis of His radiance is His spiritual life. That is the Kingdom. It was for that that man was created. It was that which he lost. It is that which the last Adam has recovered in His own Person, and here in the transfiguration He gives these three representatives of the great theory of the Kingdom a real object lesson of what the Kingdom really is. "The Kingdom is not you sitting upon thrones and exercising your importance over other people, ordering them here and there and all that sort of thing. This is the Kingdom: the Kingdom is in terms of spiritual victory resulting in spiritual radiance."

God's Gracious Response

By Robert S. Candlish


"Then said 1, Here am I; send me" (Isa. 6:8).


It is a signal instance of grace on the part of the Lord that I am allowed to be a volunteer. The Lord has a right, a dearly purchased fight, to deal with me very differently He might issue a peremptory command. He might utter his stern voice of authority, and at once order me. But he knows what is in man better than to treat thus the broken and relenting heart of one whom he has smitten by the brightness of his glorious holiness to the ground, and healed by the touch of his everliving sacrifice of blood. 

He is considerate. He is generous. His servant is not coerced or constrained, as with bit and bridle. He has the unspeakable privilege and happiness of giving himself voluntarily and, as it were, ultroneously, to the Lord, who willingly gave himself for him. He simply hears, or overhears, a conversation in heaven; a question asked and waiting to be answered.

My needs — His resources!

(Alexander Smellie, "The Secret Place" 1907)

"Acsah said: 'Let me have another gift. You have already given me land in the South — now please give me springs of wateralso!' So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs." Judges 1:15

"Also" — the word of Acsah, Caleb's daughter, is the commonest of words in the hungering and thirsting heart, and on the praying lips of the Christian.

God has done much for me. He has given me a south land, where the sun shines, where the fields are broad and rich, where grape-vines and olive trees and fig trees may flourish and yield their harvests.

But I am not yet at the end of my needs — or of His resources. He must give me also springs of water to quicken and revive everything. I have not attained. I am not fully satisfied. As liberal as He has been — He is not wearied in bestowing, nor is His treasury depleted!

Back and back to Him I shall come — with new entreaties and new desires.
Back and back to me He will return — with new endowments and new love.

"Also" — it is both my word and His!

Suppose that I am forgiven — I would have Him also add to His forgiveness, the peace and assurance which it should beget.

Suppose that I am justified in His sight by the infinite meritoriousness of my Lord Jesus Christ — I would also know now what it is to be sanctified and made holy by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

Suppose that I am His redeemed and adopted child, dwelling in the home and atmosphere of His favor — I would also be His consecrated servant and commissioned ambassador, employed to advance His Kingdom.

Suppose that He has given me the south land of His mercifulness and grace — He must also give me the springs of water, that through the whole of the encircling year I may bear much fruit to His glory.

Lord, give me springs of water also!

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