Bonar BOOKS
Monday, January 4, 2016
"Watch and pray" (Matt. xxvi. 41).
Days of Heaven Upon Earth
"Watch and pray" (Matt. xxvi. 41).
We need to watch for prayers as well as for the answers to our prayers. It needs as much wisdom to pray rightly as it does faith to receive the answers to our prayers.
We met a friend the other day, who had been in years of darkness because God had failed to answer certain prayers, and the result had been a state bordering on infidelity.
A very few moments were sufficient to convince this friend that these prayers had been entirely unauthorized, and that God had never promised to answer such prayers, and they were for things which this friend should have accomplished himself, in the exercise of ordinary wisdom.
The result was deliverance from a cloud of unbelief which was almost wrecking a Christian life. There are some things about which we do not need to pray, as much as to take the light which God has already given.
Many persons are asking God to give them peculiar signs, tokens and supernatural intimations of His will. Our business is to use the light He has given, and then He will give whatever more we need.
We need to watch for prayers as well as for the answers to our prayers. It needs as much wisdom to pray rightly as it does faith to receive the answers to our prayers.
We met a friend the other day, who had been in years of darkness because God had failed to answer certain prayers, and the result had been a state bordering on infidelity.
A very few moments were sufficient to convince this friend that these prayers had been entirely unauthorized, and that God had never promised to answer such prayers, and they were for things which this friend should have accomplished himself, in the exercise of ordinary wisdom.
The result was deliverance from a cloud of unbelief which was almost wrecking a Christian life. There are some things about which we do not need to pray, as much as to take the light which God has already given.
Many persons are asking God to give them peculiar signs, tokens and supernatural intimations of His will. Our business is to use the light He has given, and then He will give whatever more we need.
"The Lord hath sent strength for thee" (Ps. 68:28, PBV).
Streams in the Desert
The Lord is My Strength
"The Lord hath sent strength for thee" (Ps. 68:28, PBV).
The Lord imparts unto us that primary strength of character which makes everything in life work with intensity and decision. We are "strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man." And the strength is continuous; reserves of power come to us which we cannot exhaust.
"As thy days, so shall thy strength be"-strength of will, strength of affection, strength of judgment, strength of ideals and achievement.
"The Lord is my strength" to go on. He gives us power to tread the dead level, to walk the long lane that seems never to have a turning, to go through those long reaches of life which afford no pleasant surprise, and which depress the spirits in the sameness of a terrible drudgery.
"The Lord is my strength" to go up. He is to me the power by which I can climb the Hill Difficulty and not be afraid.
"The Lord is my strength" to go down. It is when we leave the bracing heights, where the wind and the sun have been about us, and when we begin to come down the hill into closer and more sultry spheres, that the heart is apt to grow faint.
I heard a man say the other day concerning his growing physical frailty, "It is the coming down that tires me!"
"The Lord is my strength" to sit still. And how difficult is the attainment! Do we not often say to one another, in seasons when we are compelled to be quiet, "If only I could do something!"
When the child is ill, and the mother stands by in comparative impotence, how severe is the test! But to do nothing, just to sit still and wait, requires tremendous strength. "The Lord is my strength!" "Our sufficiency is of God." The Silver Lining A Door Opened in Heaven "A door opened in heaven" (Rev. 4:1).
You must remember that John was in the Isle of Patmos, a lone, rocky, inhospitable prison, for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. And yet to him, under such circumstances, separated from all the loved ones of Ephesus; debarred from the worship of the Church; condemned to the companionship of uncongenial fellow-captives, were vouchsafed these visions. For him, also a door was opened.
We are reminded of Jacob, exiled from his father's house, who laid himself down in a desert place to sleep, and in his dreams beheld a ladder which united Heaven with earth, and at the top stood God.
Not to these only, but to many more, doors have been opened into Heaven, when, so far as the world was concerned, it seemed as though their circumstances were altogether unlikely for such revelations.
To prisoners and captives; to constant sufferers, bound by iron chains of pain to sick couches; to lonely pilgrims and wanderers; to women detained from the Lord's house by the demands of home, how often has the door been opened to Heaven.
But there are conditions. You must know what it is to be in the Spirit; you must be pure in heart and obedient in faith; you must be willing to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ; then when God is all in all to us, when we live, move and have our being in His favor, to us also will the door be opened. --Daily Devotional Commentary
"God hath His mountains bleak and bare, Where He doth bid us rest awhile; Crags where we breathe a purer air, Lone peaks that catch the day's first smile.
"God hath His deserts broad and brown--A solitude--a sea of sand, Where He doth let heaven's curtain down, Unknit by His Almighty hand." There We Saw the Giants
Where art thou Genesis 3:9
Our Daily HomilyWhere art thou Genesis 3:9
The cool of the day, when the breeze steals over the fevered landscape, is an appropriate time for man to hold fellowship with God. We need to have His hand laid on our throbbing temples, stilling, tranquillizing, shedding His serenity throughout our being. What the breath of evening is in summer, fellowship with God will be for thee, my soul; see that thou art not so absorbed with thy sins, thy love, or thy business, as to miss the tryst, when the sun is westering.
God misses His child. - That hour of fellowship was much to Adam, and it was more to God. Love, God's love, craves for fellowship.
As the musician for his lute, as the hart for the brook, as the mother for the twining arms and babbling talk of her child - so does God long for the free outpourings of His child's heart in prayer; misses them when withheld; is jealous when they are fitful and intermittent.
God seeks His child. - He did not wait till Adam found his way back to His side. But He hastened in search of him. So through the glades He comes to seek thee, O truant one! Where art thou, that for these many days thou hast withheld thyself from the hour of prayer? Wilt thou not say with the psalmist, "When thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek?"
God mourns over His child. - These words, in one version, are rendered, Alas, for thee: as though the heart of God were wrung with sorrow for our loss, as well as His. But He does not content Himself with regret. By the pang of travail, by the prick of thorns, by the necessity of labor, by sacrifice and gifts of covering for our nakedness, He brings us back to Himself.
Sunday, January 3, 2016
THE FAMILY OF GOD
[Roger T. Forster]
Reading: John 1:49-51; 1 Timothy 3.15-16.
ABRAHAM'S four altars helped us to discover the face of God behind the universe. Isaac's four wells revealed to us the finger of God. So God has a face and a hand. Now Jacob's four pillars are going to help us to discover something about God's family.
These four pillars represent the house of God, God's place of relationships. If God has a face, that means that He is a Person, and if He extends His hand, it is to do things, but primarily to take hold of men and women and bring them into a relationship with Himself. So this particular habit of Jacob's, of setting up pillars everywhere he went, is going to help us to understand something of those relationships in the house of God.
Jacob is sometimes a very difficult character to understand. He seems to have an ability to do everything wrong! That is very encouraging, for the Church of God is made up of people like that, and that is why he is one of the best people to teach us what the house of God is all about. Of course, all these three great men that God used were very weak and fallible, but it was through these men that God was bringing such tremendous truths to us. Abraham was very easygoing, but that is just the sort of man God uses in His Church. He has a wonderful way of dealing with hopeless material, so He takes all the easygoing, sanguine [36/37] Abrahams and puts them up on the Cross, saying: 'It is all right, Abraham. If you trust Me you will go right through.' Then there was Isaac, who was full of self-pity, but God can use that sort of material. It is a wonderful thing to be in the house of God!
But perhaps Jacob seems to us to be the worst of all. For instance, he was so tied to his mother's apron-strings that he was not married before he was seventy-seven! Well, you cannot do much with that, but God can, and that is the tremendous thing about the house of God. Who is in this house is what really matters, and that is God Himself, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
THE PILLAR AND GROUND OF TRUTH
1 Timothy, verse 15, is a very difficult verse in some ways, for it says: "The house of God, which is the church of the living God" -- and then, is there a full stop or a comma? In the Greek we cannot tell. Perhaps there is a comma and the verse goes like this: "The house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." Ah, so the Church, the house of God, is the pillar and the ground of truth! But perhaps there is a full stop there, so that the verse reads like this: "The house of God, which is the church of the living God. The pillar and ground of the truth; and without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifest in the flesh ...", and that is Jesus, who was "justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory". So perhaps Jesus is the pillar and ground of truth! Perhaps the answer is that both are the pillar and ground of truth. The Church is the pillar and ground of truth, but so also is the Lord Jesus, because all that matters about the Church is the Lord Jesus, and all that the Church is is found in the Lord Jesus. The Church is His Body. He fills all things, and He is the truth and the ground of truth, but He is found in us, so we are the pillar and the ground of truth. Perhaps that is why Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians, says: "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that body, being many, are one body: so also is the Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12). There the Body is called the Christ. All that matters about our bodies is what is inside them, and if they had no one inside them, they would not be worth anything at all. In fact, they would soon fall to pieces. They would not exist, and if the Lord Jesus did not exist today, neither would the Church; but He does exist, and is alive for evermore, so that is why the Church is still in existence, and what is in Him is the pillar and the ground of truth.
Now, if we had followed the story of Jacob and looked in the first place where Jacob's pillars are mentioned, in Genesis 28, and noticed that he put up a pillar on the ground where he had slept, we would have found that he said: "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven" (verse 17). So, the place where he set up his pillow to become a pillar was the Church, the house of God, and to make quite sure that we would understand this he poured oil over the top and anointed it. He 'Christ-ed' it. And this setting up a pillar he did four times in all. Now, you notice that it is not just the pillar that is the house of God, but the pillar and the ground.
Many churches have two things: a steeple pointing to the sky, and a graveyard. So, believe it or not, has the Church in the Scriptures. It has a ground in which there has been a burial, and it has a pillar which points up to heaven. The ground is the place where the Lord Jesus has died and been buried, and the pillar is where He is risen again and ascended to His Father's right hand, and that is the pillar and ground of truth. As we live in the Lord Jesus we live in His death and burial, in His resurrection and ascension, and it is all that which is the Church. There is that in Jacob which has to be identified with Christ's death. Although Jacob was seventy-seven, he was feeling lonely on that first night away from home, for things had come to a bad end and he was afraid. He had reached an end of himself, and he was tired of trying to do God's work for Him. But in his tiredness he lay down, and there he was finished. There was nothing more that he could do. Then God gave him a dream, and he saw a ladder set up between heaven and earth. He could see that there was something else apart from his tiredness and his deathliness, and it was something that God had raised up which opened heaven. That is why Jacob rose from where he slept, and on the ground of his death he established the ladder that he had seen in his vision. God could do something in that dead man because Jesus also rose and went up to His Father's right hand.
Some years later Jacob was fleeing from his uncle, Laban (Genesis 31), but Laban caught him up and was very angry. However, at last they came to an agreement in that place. They buried their differences there, and heaped a lot of stones upon the place. This pile of stones could be translated 'grave', and on the top of the grave they put a pillar, which they called 'Watchtower', and said: 'God will watch over us.' Do you see it again? [37/38] There was a place of burial, and a place which rose up to God Himself.
Later, in Genesis 35, Jacob reached Bethel again, and we read that Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and was buried there. Then Jacob raised up another pillar, poured on oil and wine, and called it the house of God. Once again there was a burial, and something rising up to meet God.
Then, also in chapter 35, Jacob moved down towards Bethlehem, and on the way his wife, Rachel, died. He placed her in the grave, and on it he placed a pillar. Once again there was a ground of burial, and once again there was a resurrection that rose to God.
On each of these four occasions Jacob is showing us something about the house of God, but it all comes out of his own negative experience.
1. DEATH TO ISAAC'S HOUSE
Let us move back into that house of Isaac for a few moments, and there we find Isaac and Rebekah, of whom we thought last time. They were not very close in their spiritual life, and now we see Rebekah listening at the tent door to Isaac, who is complaining that he cannot see any more and that people might be taking him in, which, in fact, is just what Rebekah is doing. Then Isaac tells Esau to go out and get the venison, after which he will bless him. Rebekah hurries out to Jacob and says: 'We must do something in a hurry, for God's purpose is going to be lost. If we do not do something quickly, you will not get the blessing, and it is quite certain that God means to bless you. I had a vision about it, but if we do not do something about it, everything will be lost.' So they quickly make up some food out of a little kid and flavour it up with spice to make it taste like venison. After all, Isaac's taste is not as good as it used to be, so it is all right. 'Come on, Jacob,' says Rebekah, 'you go in and take it into him. It is all in a good cause. We are doing God's will, and we must cheat your father somehow.' 'But, Mother,' says Jacob, 'I have a smooth skin, and Esau is a hairy man.' 'Oh, that is nothing. Just put these skins on.' So Jacob comes in to Isaac, Isaac is deceived, and Jacob receives the blessing.
When Esau arrives and Isaac understands what has happened, he lets out a great cry, the cry of a man who knows that God is greater and has accomplished His will, despite his hardened heart, his resistance and ignorance. This is a house full of intrigue, unhappiness and deceit, and of man trying to do God's will for him. Ah, Jacob, that is not the house of God! There is hatred in that house, and Esau is going to kill you. You are not learning much about relationships in this family, Jacob! Rebekah had better deceive Isaac again by saying that Jacob must go and get a wife from her brother's family. Isaac believes her, but really Rebekah does this to save Jacob's life from Esau. Is that the house of God?
It may be that the church you are in has difficulties, but God is trying to teach you something from that church. He is trying to show us from the negative what exists in the positive, and that in Christ there is another, totally different, realm of relationships, but we do not understand them, nor appreciate them, until we discover the negatives first of all. That is why the Church always looks a mess, and why there is always pain and difficulty in relationships. God is showing us what the house of man is like so that we might understand what He has given us in Christ. I do not think that any of us are spiritual enough to believe in our relationships in Christ until we have experienced the negative, and it is not a matter of just changing from smooth flesh to rough flesh, for it is all flesh. But the Church is Christ, and that is where our relationships are, with God and with each other.
Jacob lay down on that first night, tired of trying to do God's will with clever ways, intrigue, and deceit, with forcing himself, trying to get round people and keeping them in ignorance. It was all hopeless, so he said: 'I will go to sleep. I cannot go on!', and that is the death of a man who has seen that he cannot do the will of God. It is in that moment of despair, despondency and darkness that we get a vision of Christ. The ladder is Christ -- the Lord Jesus said so in the first chapter of John's Gospel. Christ is a ladder set up from earth to heaven. You see, Jacob had been trying to take steps horizontally to get God's work done and His will accomplished, but there is really only one step to take, and that is the vertical one, which is the Lord Jesus. That step has the will of God accomplished in it. It has an opened heaven. It has the voice of God, and not the voice of Isaac, Rebekah or Esau, nor of all the members of the church shouting at one another. In Christ there is the voice of God and He says: 'I will give you ...' In the vertical ladder God gives, and when He gives we only have to take. That is the house of God. If for us the house of God is a place where we are doing all the engineering and are trying to accomplish God's work for Him, then we have not really discovered that the Church is Christ; but once we have discovered that we hear God continuously saying to us: 'I will give ... I will give ...' It is the giving God who is found in His house. [38/39]
2. DEATH TO LABAN'S HOUSE
But Jacob still has a lot to learn -- and I think that is true of most of us! God sends Jacob down to Laban. Well, if Jacob was a twister, Laban was a double-twister! If we have to learn something like this from God, He will get us all involved with someone who is twice as bad as we are, or, at least that is how it will seem to us. But God is trying to say something to us, and it is that word which we are so deaf to hear, because we always think that God is saying: 'Laban is a double-twister!' Somehow, though, that does not seem to live in us, it does not do anything in us, and it does not create anything in us because we are not really hearing what God is saying. He never tells Laban off. All He has to say is to Jacob, and when Jacob really hears the message, then he can finish his apprenticeship and go home, but it takes him many years.
It may be that the church you are in has difficulties, but God is trying to teach you something from that church. He is trying to show us from the negative what exists in the positive, and that in Christ there is another, totally different, realm of relationships, but we do not understand them, nor appreciate them, until we discover the negatives first of all. That is why the Church always looks a mess, and why there is always pain and difficulty in relationships. God is showing us what the house of man is like so that we might understand what He has given us in Christ. I do not think that any of us are spiritual enough to believe in our relationships in Christ until we have experienced the negative, and it is not a matter of just changing from smooth flesh to rough flesh, for it is all flesh. But the Church is Christ, and that is where our relationships are, with God and with each other.
Jacob lay down on that first night, tired of trying to do God's will with clever ways, intrigue, and deceit, with forcing himself, trying to get round people and keeping them in ignorance. It was all hopeless, so he said: 'I will go to sleep. I cannot go on!', and that is the death of a man who has seen that he cannot do the will of God. It is in that moment of despair, despondency and darkness that we get a vision of Christ. The ladder is Christ -- the Lord Jesus said so in the first chapter of John's Gospel. Christ is a ladder set up from earth to heaven. You see, Jacob had been trying to take steps horizontally to get God's work done and His will accomplished, but there is really only one step to take, and that is the vertical one, which is the Lord Jesus. That step has the will of God accomplished in it. It has an opened heaven. It has the voice of God, and not the voice of Isaac, Rebekah or Esau, nor of all the members of the church shouting at one another. In Christ there is the voice of God and He says: 'I will give you ...' In the vertical ladder God gives, and when He gives we only have to take. That is the house of God. If for us the house of God is a place where we are doing all the engineering and are trying to accomplish God's work for Him, then we have not really discovered that the Church is Christ; but once we have discovered that we hear God continuously saying to us: 'I will give ... I will give ...' It is the giving God who is found in His house. [38/39]
2. DEATH TO LABAN'S HOUSE
But Jacob still has a lot to learn -- and I think that is true of most of us! God sends Jacob down to Laban. Well, if Jacob was a twister, Laban was a double-twister! If we have to learn something like this from God, He will get us all involved with someone who is twice as bad as we are, or, at least that is how it will seem to us. But God is trying to say something to us, and it is that word which we are so deaf to hear, because we always think that God is saying: 'Laban is a double-twister!' Somehow, though, that does not seem to live in us, it does not do anything in us, and it does not create anything in us because we are not really hearing what God is saying. He never tells Laban off. All He has to say is to Jacob, and when Jacob really hears the message, then he can finish his apprenticeship and go home, but it takes him many years.
Singleness of Eye
Singleness of Eye
by T. Austin-Sparks
by T. Austin-Sparks
Reading: Luke 11:33-36.
I want to preface what I have to say with a brief personal word. I think what will be said may be very testing to many of us and difficult to understand or receive, but I want to say to you that this word has been deeply searching my own heart and giving me some very serious exercise before the Lord for some days past, so much so that not until now was I sure that it was a word for others, to be passed on. I say that because I want you to understand and believe that I am not preaching at you, but that this is something which must really be a matter for our mutual exercise and concern.
The Single Eye and a Luminous Body
You will see that is borne out by the context. You have a glance at that chapter. You will see there is a reference by the Master to "this evil generation (which) seeks after a sign", and He says, "there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah" (Luke 11:29). Now then, Jonah was a sign. Jonah's presence was a matter of illumination; his very presence, his bodily presence on the earth was a matter of illumination; that is, it was a matter of testimony by his personal presence. Then the reference to the queen of Sheba and the result of the queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon was that she, by her very presence, was a testimony to that glory. I think you have got to the heart of the matter.
So it is testimony, it is effectiveness, it is intrinsic value, it is our registration in the world that is referred to here in terms of light. It is not a matter of knowledge; it is a matter of being, "Thy whole body shall be luminous". It is being. It is not having, and it is not knowing here, but what we are personally. I trust that is quite clear, and if so, we are able to go on with the further meaning of the single eye. What we have said is reached and better understood by this principle that is enunciated of the single eye.
"When thine eye is single, thy whole body also is luminous". "The lamp of thy body is thine eye". The body that is the vessel of light, of testimony, demands a lamp to make it luminous. The Master here says that that lamp is the eye, and then He says that singleness of eye makes for a luminous body. We will talk more about that luminous body in a moment. Do not get wrong ideas about that. But singleness of eye makes for a luminous person being present in this world; a sign. If we start with Jonah, that is perfectly clear. Jonah's death, burial and resurrection was a sign and it became a personal matter so that he was luminous as a personal testimony to resurrection, triumph over death and death's judgment, and the cause of judgment - sin. That was the full message for Nineveh. And the queen of Sheba embodies the principle. One thing you notice about the queen of Sheba was her singleness of eye. She had heard a report. She did not say, "I do not believe it, it is exaggerated." She did not put some other construction upon it. She said, "I am going to see." Singleness of eye will lead us to personal investigation into matters, whether the report be good or evil. The contrary to singleness of eye would be prejudice, suspicion, mistrust. She went, she saw, and because singleness of eye predominated with her, she became a mighty witness in the far country to the greatness of Solomon and the greatness of Solomon's God. That by the way.
What Singleness of Eye is
It raises very many practical questions. Can we rejoice in the work of God without being the instrument, without feeling at all bad that we are not the instrument and just rejoice in the work without any place being given to us in it? Or in seeing the work of God being done and going on, do we at once get into it with self-pity or with our own ambition and desire to have some place in that, which is not a pure, utterly selfless desire, completely circumcised in heart? Can we rejoice and be thankful when the gospel is preached even of contention? You remember Paul. "Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife... thinking to raise up affliction for me in my bonds" (Phil. 1:15-17). Oh, their motive! Unholy motive, the evil of that heart that is not singleness of eye, that is not purity of heart. But what was Paul's reaction, "There is something wrong here; people like that ought not to be allowed to preach the gospel. The Lord ought not to use that"? Paul said, "No, whether it be even of contention, whether it is with that evil motive, I rejoice that the gospel is preached anyway!" That is singleness of eye.
Can we be even used of the Lord in any way, many ways, not only in public ministry or spoken ministry, but in other ways - in practical service, in giving - and then disappear? Go right away at once behind the curtain? It is the Lord's interest, not ours - hands off; glad to be used, but out of sight at once, not peeping round to get the appreciation or thanks for what we have done, or to have some place in things because we have helped them. All such matters go to the heart of this whole question of singleness of eye. Can we let go, and stand right back? You must not misunderstand what I am saying because there is another way of interpreting it - being careless, indifferent, "Let them get on with it!" That is only another form to the contrary of purity of heart. But I mean being out of it ourselves, letting go.
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