"I Am That I Am" # 2
There is another note in this loud chorus of truth, which is especial sweetness to the believer's ear. It tells melodiously that Jesus cannot change. He is as constant as He is great. As surely as He ever lives, so surely He ever lives the same. He is an infinity of never varying oneness. He sits on the calm throne of eternal serenity. Change is the defect of things below - for things below are all defective. Immutability reigns above - for immutability is perfection's essence. Our brightest morn often ends in storm. Summer's radiance gives place to winter's gloom. The smiling flower soon lies withered. The babbling brook is soon a parched-up channel. The friend who smiled, smiles no more friendly welcomes. Bereavement weeps where once the family beamed with domestic joy. Gardens wither into deserts. Babyons crumble into unsightly ruins. On all things a sad inscription writes "fleeting - transient - vanishing." Time flaps a ceaseless wing, and from the wings decay and death drop down. "I AM THAT I AM" sits high above all this. He is "the same yesterday, and today, and forever."
The unchangeableness of Jesus is the unchangeableness of His attributes. Each shines brightly in this bright mirror. But a rapid glance at His love and power must suffice. His love is in perpetual bloom. It is always in summertime. The roots are deeply buried in Himself; therefore the branches cannot fade. Believer, drink hourly of this cup of joy. Do not allow satan to infuse a poisonous doubt. Christ loved you fully when, in the councils of eternity, He received you into His heart. He loved you truly when, in the fullness of time, He took upon Himself your curse, and drained your hell-deep dues. He loved tenderly when He showed you, by the Spirit, His hands and His feet, and whispered to you that you were His. He loves you faithfully while He ceases not to intercede in your behalf, and to scatter blessings on your person and your soul. He will love you intensely in heaven when you are manifested as His precious purchase and crowned as His bride!
To each inquiry - has He loved? does He love? and will He love? - the one reply is, "I AM THAT I AM." Do not raise the objection, if He thus loves, why am I thus? why is my path so rugged, and my heart like flint? You will soon know that your bitterest trials and your sorest pains are sure tokens of His love. The father corrects because he loves. In attentive care the physician deeply probes the wounds. Thus Jesus makes earth hard, that you may long for heaven's holy rest. He shows you your self-vileness that you may prize His cleansing blood. He allows you to stumble that you may cleave more closely to His side. He makes the world a blank that you may seek all comfort in Himself. If He seems to change, it is that you may change. He hides His face, that you may look for Him. He is silent, that you may cry more loudly. His desertion prevents your desertion. He saves from real hell, by casting into seeming hell. But love fails not. All His dealings are its everflowing, overflowing tide. On each the eye of faith can read, "I AM THAT I AM."
Power goes hand in hand with love. They co-exist and co-endure. It was a mighty voice which said, "Be" - all things were. It was a mighty hand which framed this so wondrous universe. It is a mighty arm which turns the wheel of providence. This power still is, and ever will be, what it always has been. No age enfeebles, and no use exhausts it. This is the Church's rock. The Bible, blazing with its exploits, encourages the "worm Jacob" to "be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might." He can still bid the seas of difficulty to recede. He can cause hurricanes and tempests to cease. He can make straight the crooked paths of evil. He can level the mountains of high-towering corruption. He can stop the lion-mouth of persecution. He can quench the scorching flames of every lust. In the face of all Goliaths, He cheers His followers to victory, under the banner of "I AM THAT I AM."
Reader, these thoughts scarcely touch the boundary line of the shadow of this glorious name. But surely they show the blessedness of those who, guided by the Spirit, repose beneath the wings of Jesus. 'The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.' "I AM THAT I AM" must perish or must change, before their names can be cast from His heart! Some greater power must arise, before they can be plucked from His tight-grasping hand. The bare idea is folly! Happy flock! "I AM THAT I AM" loves them, and they are loved - calls them, and they follow Him - sanctifies them, and they are sanctified - blesses them,and they are blessed - gives them life, and they live - gives them glory, and they are glorified.
But perhaps it is your wretched case to live unsprinkled by His saving blood. Will you die thus? What! thus appear before His great white throne? His truth condemns you - and it cannot change. His wrath burns hotly against you - and it cannot relent. His power has commission to destroy you - and it cannot be withstood. "I AM THAT I AM" becomes an idle fable, if truth and wrath and power war not eternally with sin. And can they war and not prevail?
Believer, the eternity and unchangeableness of "I AM THAT I AM" makes heaven to be heaven for ever. Sinner, the eternity and unchangeableness of "I AM THAT I AM" makes hell to be hell forever.
~William Law~
(The End)
A Proliferation of Christian Devotionals and Sermons
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
"I Am That I Am" # 1
"I Am That I Am" # 1
Exodus 3:14
The believer is called to wayfaring and warfaring struggles. He has to bear a daily cross to fight a daily fight. But in every hour of need a sure support is near. Behold Moses. The ground which he must tread is very slippery. The hill of his difficulties is very steep. A foe opposes every step. But a staff and a sword are provided for him in the name of his guiding and protecting Lord. "I AM THAT I AM." On this he can lean the whole burden of his cares, and fears, and pains. By this he can scatter kings as dust. This support is still the same, ever mighty, ever near. The feeblest pilgrim may grasp it by the hand of faith. And whoever grasps it is "as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abides forever."
"I AM THAT I AM." Such is the voice from the burning bush. The Speaker, then, is hidden in no mask of mystery. It is the angel of the everlasting Covenant. It is the great Redeemer. He would establish His people on the firm rock of comfort. Therefore with trumpet-tongue He thus assures them that all the majesty, all the supremacy, all the glory of absolute and essential Deity, are His inherent right. O my soul, into what a speck must poor man dwindle before such greatness! The limits of the mind cannot scan it. Intellect would desire to fly on eagle's wing around the ever-widening circle. But vain is the effort. Its height is on heaven's summit. What mortal arm can reach it? It is as space which has no bounds. What human line can measure it? Our mortal eyes cannot pierce unlimited expanse. Our scales cannot weigh the mountains. Our vessels cannot measure the ocean's depths. So our faculties are too short to probe the immensities of God. To grasp divine essence requires divine largeness. "I AM THAT I AM" alone can read the volume of that title.
Shall we then repine? What! repine because our God is so great? Where is the subject who frets because he cannot count his prince's treasures? Let us rather bow our heads in pious adoration. Let us rather give thanks that a mine is open in which the very dust is gold! Let us rather humble ourselves, that we are so slow and careless to gather up the manna of rich truth which falls at the door. Let us rather pray the Spirit to illumine more clearly the written page. Let us rather long for the day when every cloud which veils our God shall brighten into perfect light; and when His people 'shall be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is.' Come then, and with such loving teachableness let us take our seat beside this sea of truth, and strive with reverence to touch the spray which sparkles on the shore.
"I AM THAT I AM." Here the first sound is eternity. Jesus, as God, here puts on eternity as His robe. He knows no past. He knows no future. He lives unmoved in one unmoving present. He stretches through all the ages which are gone and which are yet to come. His only bounds are immeasurable boundlessness. Before time was born, He is "I AM THAT I AM." When time shall have expired, He still is "I AM THAT I AM." If there had been the moment when His being dawned, His name would be, I am what I shall not be." But He is, "I AM THAT I AM." Thus He treads first and last beneath His feet. He sits on the unbroken circumference of existence, as He who ever was, and ever is, and ever shall be. Let thought fly back, until in weariness it faint; let it look onward until all vision fail; it ever finds Him the same "I AM."
Reader! look down now from this astounding glory and fix your eye on Bethlehem's manger. A lowly Baby lies in the lowly cradle of a lowly town, the offspring of a lowly mother. Look again. That child is the eternal "I AM." He whose Deity never had birth, is born "the woman's Seed." He, whom no infinitudes can hold, is contained within Infant's age, and Infant's form. He, who never began to be, as God, here beings to be, as man. And can it be, that the great "I AM THAT I AM" shrinks into our flesh, and is little upon our earth, as one newborn of yesterday? It is so! The Lord promised it. Prophets foretold it. Types prefigured it. An angel announces it. Heaven rings with rapture at it. Faith sees it. The redeemed rejoice in it.
But why is this wonder of wonders? Why is eternity's Lord a Child of time? He thus stoops, that He may save poor wretched sinners such as we are. Could He not do so by His will or by His word? Ah! no. He willed, and all things were. He speaks, and all obey. But he must die, as man, that a lost soul may live. To rescue from one stain of sin, the Eternal must take the sinner's place, and bear sin's curse and pay sin's debt, and suffer sin's penalty, and wash out sin's filth, and atone for sin's malignity. "I AM THAT I AM" alone could do this. "I AM THAT I AM" has done it.
What self-denial, what self-abasement, what self-emptying is here! Surely, royalty in rags, angels in cells, is no descent compared to Deity in flesh! But mighty love moves Jesus to despise all shame,and to lie low in misery's lowest mire. Through ages past His delights were with the sons of men. Eternity to come is but a void, unless His people share His glory. Therefore He humbles Himself to earth, that specks of earth may rise to heaven's immortality. Believer, you rejoice in prospect of thus living with Him forever. But why is thee full rapture in the thought? Do not you feel that the crowning ecstasy is in this? Eternity will afford you time to gaze with steady look on a Saviour's glories, to sing with unwearied hymn a Saviour's praise, to bless with perpetual blessing a Saviour's name, and to learn with ever-expanding knowledge a Saviour's worth!
~William Law~
(continued with # 2)
Exodus 3:14
The believer is called to wayfaring and warfaring struggles. He has to bear a daily cross to fight a daily fight. But in every hour of need a sure support is near. Behold Moses. The ground which he must tread is very slippery. The hill of his difficulties is very steep. A foe opposes every step. But a staff and a sword are provided for him in the name of his guiding and protecting Lord. "I AM THAT I AM." On this he can lean the whole burden of his cares, and fears, and pains. By this he can scatter kings as dust. This support is still the same, ever mighty, ever near. The feeblest pilgrim may grasp it by the hand of faith. And whoever grasps it is "as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abides forever."
"I AM THAT I AM." Such is the voice from the burning bush. The Speaker, then, is hidden in no mask of mystery. It is the angel of the everlasting Covenant. It is the great Redeemer. He would establish His people on the firm rock of comfort. Therefore with trumpet-tongue He thus assures them that all the majesty, all the supremacy, all the glory of absolute and essential Deity, are His inherent right. O my soul, into what a speck must poor man dwindle before such greatness! The limits of the mind cannot scan it. Intellect would desire to fly on eagle's wing around the ever-widening circle. But vain is the effort. Its height is on heaven's summit. What mortal arm can reach it? It is as space which has no bounds. What human line can measure it? Our mortal eyes cannot pierce unlimited expanse. Our scales cannot weigh the mountains. Our vessels cannot measure the ocean's depths. So our faculties are too short to probe the immensities of God. To grasp divine essence requires divine largeness. "I AM THAT I AM" alone can read the volume of that title.
Shall we then repine? What! repine because our God is so great? Where is the subject who frets because he cannot count his prince's treasures? Let us rather bow our heads in pious adoration. Let us rather give thanks that a mine is open in which the very dust is gold! Let us rather humble ourselves, that we are so slow and careless to gather up the manna of rich truth which falls at the door. Let us rather pray the Spirit to illumine more clearly the written page. Let us rather long for the day when every cloud which veils our God shall brighten into perfect light; and when His people 'shall be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is.' Come then, and with such loving teachableness let us take our seat beside this sea of truth, and strive with reverence to touch the spray which sparkles on the shore.
"I AM THAT I AM." Here the first sound is eternity. Jesus, as God, here puts on eternity as His robe. He knows no past. He knows no future. He lives unmoved in one unmoving present. He stretches through all the ages which are gone and which are yet to come. His only bounds are immeasurable boundlessness. Before time was born, He is "I AM THAT I AM." When time shall have expired, He still is "I AM THAT I AM." If there had been the moment when His being dawned, His name would be, I am what I shall not be." But He is, "I AM THAT I AM." Thus He treads first and last beneath His feet. He sits on the unbroken circumference of existence, as He who ever was, and ever is, and ever shall be. Let thought fly back, until in weariness it faint; let it look onward until all vision fail; it ever finds Him the same "I AM."
Reader! look down now from this astounding glory and fix your eye on Bethlehem's manger. A lowly Baby lies in the lowly cradle of a lowly town, the offspring of a lowly mother. Look again. That child is the eternal "I AM." He whose Deity never had birth, is born "the woman's Seed." He, whom no infinitudes can hold, is contained within Infant's age, and Infant's form. He, who never began to be, as God, here beings to be, as man. And can it be, that the great "I AM THAT I AM" shrinks into our flesh, and is little upon our earth, as one newborn of yesterday? It is so! The Lord promised it. Prophets foretold it. Types prefigured it. An angel announces it. Heaven rings with rapture at it. Faith sees it. The redeemed rejoice in it.
But why is this wonder of wonders? Why is eternity's Lord a Child of time? He thus stoops, that He may save poor wretched sinners such as we are. Could He not do so by His will or by His word? Ah! no. He willed, and all things were. He speaks, and all obey. But he must die, as man, that a lost soul may live. To rescue from one stain of sin, the Eternal must take the sinner's place, and bear sin's curse and pay sin's debt, and suffer sin's penalty, and wash out sin's filth, and atone for sin's malignity. "I AM THAT I AM" alone could do this. "I AM THAT I AM" has done it.
What self-denial, what self-abasement, what self-emptying is here! Surely, royalty in rags, angels in cells, is no descent compared to Deity in flesh! But mighty love moves Jesus to despise all shame,and to lie low in misery's lowest mire. Through ages past His delights were with the sons of men. Eternity to come is but a void, unless His people share His glory. Therefore He humbles Himself to earth, that specks of earth may rise to heaven's immortality. Believer, you rejoice in prospect of thus living with Him forever. But why is thee full rapture in the thought? Do not you feel that the crowning ecstasy is in this? Eternity will afford you time to gaze with steady look on a Saviour's glories, to sing with unwearied hymn a Saviour's praise, to bless with perpetual blessing a Saviour's name, and to learn with ever-expanding knowledge a Saviour's worth!
~William Law~
(continued with # 2)
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Regaining Our Original Holiness
Regaining Our Original Holiness
In the first part of this chapter, I want to deal with a topic that has often been the cause of controversy among Christians. The basic question is, How can God be all love and goodness to His creatures, when the Scriptures also say that He hardened the heart of Pharaoh (Exodus 9:12), and that both good and evil comes from Him? (Job 2:10). "Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth" (Romans 9:18). God says, "I form the light, and create darkness" (Isaiah 45:7).
Why do we have so much difficulty reconciling such contrary things that are said about God? We know that He wills life and goodness, and yet evil and death are said to come from His as well. (Micah 1:12). Our difficulties with this arise when with our finite minds we try to consider the operations of God, or when we try to understand the contrary things as if they were said about anyone but God. The operations of God are vastly different from anything that can be done by human beings, and the only relation that His operations have to His creatures is the fact that He created them.
This, and this alone, is the working of the Deity in heaven and on earth. Through all eternity, nothing comes from Him or is done by Him in His creatures except an essential manifestation of Himself in them, which restores the glory and perfection of their first existence. He can be nothing else toward the creature besides the same love and goodness that He was at the Creation. Therefore, to the creature who turns from Him, God can be nothing else but the cause of its evil and miserable state. This is why the apostle wrote, "I had not know sin, but by the law ... for without the law sin was dead" (Romans 7:7-8). To clarify, sin comes by the law, because where there is no law, there is no transgression.
Now, the divine nature in man is the one great law of God from which all that is good and all that is evil in man has its whole state and nature. The life of a man can have no holiness or goodness in it unless the divine nature within him is the law by which he lives. He can commit no other sin, nor feel any kind of hurt or evil from it, except what comes from resisting or rebelling against the godliness that is in him. Therefore, the good and evil of man are equally from God.
And yet, this could not be so if God's love and goodness could change. What is He did not have only one will and work of love and goodness toward all His creation? The law is immutably righteous, holy, and good (Romans 7:12), and has only one will and one work toward man, whether he receives good or evil from it. The law is righteous and holy because it never changes its good will and work toward man. Man, however, changes in his obedience to it. This is how God can truly say these two contrary things, "I cause good" and "I cause evil," without the least contradiction.
On the same basis, it must be said that happiness and misery, life and death, tenderness and hardness of heart, are also from God.
This is the one true key to the state of man before his fall, to his state after his fall,and to the whole nature of his redemption. All three of these states were, in a few words of our Saviour, set forth in the clearest and strongest light. John 15:5 describes man's state before the Fall: "I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." This was man's first created state of glory and perfection; it consisted of living and abiding in God, communing with Him and having life from Him, just as the branch has its life in and from the vine.
Man's redeemed state is summed up in the following words: "I am that bread of life ... which cometh down from heaven" (John 6:48, 50): "he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever" (v. 58); "whoso eateth my flesh, and drink my blood, hath eternal life...[he] dwelleth in me, and I in him" (vv. 54, 56).
This is our whole redemption; it consists only of having the full life of God, or Christ reborn in us. In this way, our first perfection, our miserable fall, and our blessed redemption have all their glory or all their misery solely from God. God alone is all that is good, and He can be nothing else but good toward the creature who is in Him. Whether angel or man, a created being can only be happy when it has this one God of goodness truly living and operating in it. Otherwise, it is miserable.
So many things that come under the name of religion are immediately cut off by this! The only thing that brings life, happiness, and glory is the operation of the triune God of love and goodness within us. Death, evil, and misery come when we turn from this essential God of our lives, to something in ourselves or in the people around us. He is deluded who thinks that anything but the body, the blood, and the Spirit of Christ can make him into a new creature and be his atonement, his reconciliation, and his union with God. Only when Christ has made him into a new creature is he that first man whom God created, in whom He can be well pleased. But until then, he is a man whom the cherubim's two-edged flaming sword will not allow to enter into paradise.
The Life of God Revealed in Us
How, then, are we to regain that first birth of Christ? We are to regain it in just the same way as Adam first obtained it. How was that? How did he help promote God's creating power? He did nothing out of his own power. Restoring the first life that we had in God is exactly the same work as God creating us in the beginning. Therefore, we can have no more share of power in the one than in the other. As creatures fallen from God, our only responsibility with regard to our growth in God is not to resist what God is doing toward creating us anew.
All that God is doing toward the new creation of our souls had its beginning before the foundation of the world. Paul said, "He hath chosen us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4). This is the same as saying that God, out of His great mercy, chose to preserve a seed of the Word and Spirit of God in fallen man, and that, through the meditation of a God incarnate, the seed would revive into the fullness of stature in Christ Jesus in which Adam was originally created. This work of God toward a new creation is according to the same essential operation of God in us that first created us in His image and likeness. Therefore, man's sole duty is to yield himself up to it and not resist it.
Who are these people who resist being reborn? They are all who do not deny themselves, take up their crosses daily, and follow Christ. For everything besides this is the flesh warring against the spirit. The natural man resists all the essential operation of God that would recreate him in Christ Jesus. But the natural man is not the only one who resists the work of God. The believer also resists it when he takes anything to be the truth of piety, devotion, or religious worship, except faith, hope, trust, and dependence upon only what the all-creating Word and all-sanctifying Spirit of God work in his soul.
If you want to know how you are to understand this essential operation of the triune, holy Deity in your soul, and why nothing else can be the grace or help of God that brings salvation,consider the following analogy. The light and air of this world are universal powers that are essential to the life of all the creatures of this world. They are essential because the creature cannot see until light makes contact with it, and it cannot live until air is flowing through its lungs. Again, both the light and the air are universal powers, and the creature's light and air must come from these powers.
It is the same with the operation of the triune God in the life of all godly creatures, whether men or angels. The light and the Holy Spirit of God are universal powers, essential to the birth of a godly life in the creature. The rebirth of a divine life in the creature can begin no sooner than the Word and Spirit of God are reborn in the creature. Nor can the divine life survive any longer than it is united with and under the continual operation of that Word and Spirit. Hence, it is truly said that spiritual life and spiritual death, spiritual good and spiritual evil, happiness and misery, are from God, solely because there is no good except in God, and the only operation of God in and to the creature is that of heavenly life, light, love, and goodness.
Man, who was created in the image and likeness of God to be a habitation and manifestation of the triune God of goodness, had turned from his holy state of life in God because of the perverseness of a false will. He was therefore dead to the blessed union and essential operation of God in his soul. However, the goodness of God toward man did not alter, but it stood in the same goodwill toward man as at the first. Toward the whole human race, God willed that every individual might be saved from the state of death and misery into which he had fallen.
God's Providence Toward His People
From this unchangeable and unceasing love of God toward man, a wonderful demonstration of providences came forth. God used a variety of means and dispensations - visions, voices, and messages from heaven; laws, prophecies,and promises - all adapted to the different states, conditions, and ages of the fallen world. He did this so that every art of divine wisdom and every act of love could break man away from his earthly delusion and produce in him a sense of his lost glory. Then, man would be capable of experiencing again that blessed, essential operation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in his soul, which was the glory of his first creation.
In this demonstration of divine and redeeming providence, God had to deal with poor, blind, earthly creatures who had lost all sense of heavenly things. Even so, the wisdom of God must often humanize itself, as it were, and God must condescend to speak of Himself after the manner of men. He must speak of His eyes, His ears, His hands, His nose, and so on, because the earthly creature, the mere natural man, could in no other way be brought to an awareness of what God is to him.
But now, all these actions of Providence were only for the sake of something higher - the salvation of man and his reunion with God through Christ. Meanwhile, the mystery of God in man, and man in God, still lay hidden. Pentecost was the only thing that took away all the veils and showed the kingdom of God as it was in itself. It set man again under the direct, essential operation of God, which had given birth to a holy Adam in Paradise. Types and shadows ended because the substance of them was found. The cloven tongues of fire put an end to them by opening the spiritual eyes that Adam had closed up, by unstopping the spiritual ears that he had filled with clay, and by making his dumb sons to speak with new tongues.
And what did they say when they spoke with new tongues? They said that all old things are gone, that a new heaven and a new earth are coming forth, and that God Himself has been manifested in the flesh of men, who are not all taught by God Himself. And what are they taught? The same thing that Adam was taught in his first created life in God, namely, that the direct essential operation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is henceforth the birth-right of all who become true disciples of Christ. And so, the old creation and the fall of man ended, because God was manifested in the flesh, dying in and for the world and coming again in the Spirit, to be the life and light of all the sons of Adam.
~William Law~
(The End)
In the first part of this chapter, I want to deal with a topic that has often been the cause of controversy among Christians. The basic question is, How can God be all love and goodness to His creatures, when the Scriptures also say that He hardened the heart of Pharaoh (Exodus 9:12), and that both good and evil comes from Him? (Job 2:10). "Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth" (Romans 9:18). God says, "I form the light, and create darkness" (Isaiah 45:7).
Why do we have so much difficulty reconciling such contrary things that are said about God? We know that He wills life and goodness, and yet evil and death are said to come from His as well. (Micah 1:12). Our difficulties with this arise when with our finite minds we try to consider the operations of God, or when we try to understand the contrary things as if they were said about anyone but God. The operations of God are vastly different from anything that can be done by human beings, and the only relation that His operations have to His creatures is the fact that He created them.
This, and this alone, is the working of the Deity in heaven and on earth. Through all eternity, nothing comes from Him or is done by Him in His creatures except an essential manifestation of Himself in them, which restores the glory and perfection of their first existence. He can be nothing else toward the creature besides the same love and goodness that He was at the Creation. Therefore, to the creature who turns from Him, God can be nothing else but the cause of its evil and miserable state. This is why the apostle wrote, "I had not know sin, but by the law ... for without the law sin was dead" (Romans 7:7-8). To clarify, sin comes by the law, because where there is no law, there is no transgression.
Now, the divine nature in man is the one great law of God from which all that is good and all that is evil in man has its whole state and nature. The life of a man can have no holiness or goodness in it unless the divine nature within him is the law by which he lives. He can commit no other sin, nor feel any kind of hurt or evil from it, except what comes from resisting or rebelling against the godliness that is in him. Therefore, the good and evil of man are equally from God.
And yet, this could not be so if God's love and goodness could change. What is He did not have only one will and work of love and goodness toward all His creation? The law is immutably righteous, holy, and good (Romans 7:12), and has only one will and one work toward man, whether he receives good or evil from it. The law is righteous and holy because it never changes its good will and work toward man. Man, however, changes in his obedience to it. This is how God can truly say these two contrary things, "I cause good" and "I cause evil," without the least contradiction.
On the same basis, it must be said that happiness and misery, life and death, tenderness and hardness of heart, are also from God.
This is the one true key to the state of man before his fall, to his state after his fall,and to the whole nature of his redemption. All three of these states were, in a few words of our Saviour, set forth in the clearest and strongest light. John 15:5 describes man's state before the Fall: "I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." This was man's first created state of glory and perfection; it consisted of living and abiding in God, communing with Him and having life from Him, just as the branch has its life in and from the vine.
Man's redeemed state is summed up in the following words: "I am that bread of life ... which cometh down from heaven" (John 6:48, 50): "he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever" (v. 58); "whoso eateth my flesh, and drink my blood, hath eternal life...[he] dwelleth in me, and I in him" (vv. 54, 56).
This is our whole redemption; it consists only of having the full life of God, or Christ reborn in us. In this way, our first perfection, our miserable fall, and our blessed redemption have all their glory or all their misery solely from God. God alone is all that is good, and He can be nothing else but good toward the creature who is in Him. Whether angel or man, a created being can only be happy when it has this one God of goodness truly living and operating in it. Otherwise, it is miserable.
So many things that come under the name of religion are immediately cut off by this! The only thing that brings life, happiness, and glory is the operation of the triune God of love and goodness within us. Death, evil, and misery come when we turn from this essential God of our lives, to something in ourselves or in the people around us. He is deluded who thinks that anything but the body, the blood, and the Spirit of Christ can make him into a new creature and be his atonement, his reconciliation, and his union with God. Only when Christ has made him into a new creature is he that first man whom God created, in whom He can be well pleased. But until then, he is a man whom the cherubim's two-edged flaming sword will not allow to enter into paradise.
The Life of God Revealed in Us
How, then, are we to regain that first birth of Christ? We are to regain it in just the same way as Adam first obtained it. How was that? How did he help promote God's creating power? He did nothing out of his own power. Restoring the first life that we had in God is exactly the same work as God creating us in the beginning. Therefore, we can have no more share of power in the one than in the other. As creatures fallen from God, our only responsibility with regard to our growth in God is not to resist what God is doing toward creating us anew.
All that God is doing toward the new creation of our souls had its beginning before the foundation of the world. Paul said, "He hath chosen us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4). This is the same as saying that God, out of His great mercy, chose to preserve a seed of the Word and Spirit of God in fallen man, and that, through the meditation of a God incarnate, the seed would revive into the fullness of stature in Christ Jesus in which Adam was originally created. This work of God toward a new creation is according to the same essential operation of God in us that first created us in His image and likeness. Therefore, man's sole duty is to yield himself up to it and not resist it.
Who are these people who resist being reborn? They are all who do not deny themselves, take up their crosses daily, and follow Christ. For everything besides this is the flesh warring against the spirit. The natural man resists all the essential operation of God that would recreate him in Christ Jesus. But the natural man is not the only one who resists the work of God. The believer also resists it when he takes anything to be the truth of piety, devotion, or religious worship, except faith, hope, trust, and dependence upon only what the all-creating Word and all-sanctifying Spirit of God work in his soul.
If you want to know how you are to understand this essential operation of the triune, holy Deity in your soul, and why nothing else can be the grace or help of God that brings salvation,consider the following analogy. The light and air of this world are universal powers that are essential to the life of all the creatures of this world. They are essential because the creature cannot see until light makes contact with it, and it cannot live until air is flowing through its lungs. Again, both the light and the air are universal powers, and the creature's light and air must come from these powers.
It is the same with the operation of the triune God in the life of all godly creatures, whether men or angels. The light and the Holy Spirit of God are universal powers, essential to the birth of a godly life in the creature. The rebirth of a divine life in the creature can begin no sooner than the Word and Spirit of God are reborn in the creature. Nor can the divine life survive any longer than it is united with and under the continual operation of that Word and Spirit. Hence, it is truly said that spiritual life and spiritual death, spiritual good and spiritual evil, happiness and misery, are from God, solely because there is no good except in God, and the only operation of God in and to the creature is that of heavenly life, light, love, and goodness.
Man, who was created in the image and likeness of God to be a habitation and manifestation of the triune God of goodness, had turned from his holy state of life in God because of the perverseness of a false will. He was therefore dead to the blessed union and essential operation of God in his soul. However, the goodness of God toward man did not alter, but it stood in the same goodwill toward man as at the first. Toward the whole human race, God willed that every individual might be saved from the state of death and misery into which he had fallen.
God's Providence Toward His People
From this unchangeable and unceasing love of God toward man, a wonderful demonstration of providences came forth. God used a variety of means and dispensations - visions, voices, and messages from heaven; laws, prophecies,and promises - all adapted to the different states, conditions, and ages of the fallen world. He did this so that every art of divine wisdom and every act of love could break man away from his earthly delusion and produce in him a sense of his lost glory. Then, man would be capable of experiencing again that blessed, essential operation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in his soul, which was the glory of his first creation.
In this demonstration of divine and redeeming providence, God had to deal with poor, blind, earthly creatures who had lost all sense of heavenly things. Even so, the wisdom of God must often humanize itself, as it were, and God must condescend to speak of Himself after the manner of men. He must speak of His eyes, His ears, His hands, His nose, and so on, because the earthly creature, the mere natural man, could in no other way be brought to an awareness of what God is to him.
But now, all these actions of Providence were only for the sake of something higher - the salvation of man and his reunion with God through Christ. Meanwhile, the mystery of God in man, and man in God, still lay hidden. Pentecost was the only thing that took away all the veils and showed the kingdom of God as it was in itself. It set man again under the direct, essential operation of God, which had given birth to a holy Adam in Paradise. Types and shadows ended because the substance of them was found. The cloven tongues of fire put an end to them by opening the spiritual eyes that Adam had closed up, by unstopping the spiritual ears that he had filled with clay, and by making his dumb sons to speak with new tongues.
And what did they say when they spoke with new tongues? They said that all old things are gone, that a new heaven and a new earth are coming forth, and that God Himself has been manifested in the flesh of men, who are not all taught by God Himself. And what are they taught? The same thing that Adam was taught in his first created life in God, namely, that the direct essential operation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is henceforth the birth-right of all who become true disciples of Christ. And so, the old creation and the fall of man ended, because God was manifested in the flesh, dying in and for the world and coming again in the Spirit, to be the life and light of all the sons of Adam.
~William Law~
(The End)
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Unction!
Unction!
The Cinderella of the Church today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy, neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel!!
The offense of prayer is that it does not essentially tie in to mental efficiency. That is not to say that prayer is a partner to mental sloth. But in these days, efficiency and smartness are at a premium. Prayer is conditioned to one thing alone, and that is to spirituality. One does not need to be spiritual to preach, that is, to make and deliver sermons of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude. By a combination of memory, knowledge, ambition, personality, plus well-lined book shelves,self-confidence and a sense of having arrived - the pulpit is yours almost anywhere these days. Preaching of the type mentioned affects men; prayer affects God. Preaching affects time; prayer affects eternity. The pulpit can be a shop window to display our talents, the closet speaks death to display.
The tragedy of this last hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving our too many dead sermons to too many dead people. There is a strange thing that I have seen even in the fundamentalist circles: it is preaching without unction. What is unction? I hardly know what it is, but I know what it is not, or at least I know when it is not upon my own soul. Preaching without unction kills instead of giving life. The unctionless preacher is a savor of death unto death. The Word does not live unless the unction is upon the preacher. Preacher, with all thy getting, get unction!
Brethren, we could well manage to be half as intellectual if we were twice as spiritual. Preaching is a spiritual business. A sermon born in the head reaches the head. A sermon born in the heart reaches the heart. A spiritual preacher will under God produce spiritually-minded people. Unction is not a gentle dove beating her wings against the bars outside of the preacher's soul; rather she must be pursued and won. Unction cannot be learned, only earned by prayer. Unction is God's knighthood for the soldier-preacher who has wrestled in prayer and gained the victory. Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet. The meeting is won or lost before the preacher's foot enters the pulpit. Unction is like perfume. Unction is like dynamite. Unction comes not by the medium of the bishop's hands, neither does it mildew when the preacher is cast into prison. Unction will pierce and percolate. It will sweeten and soften. When the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony heart, unction will succeed.
What a fever of church building there is just now, yet without unctionized preachers these altars will never see anxious penitents. Suppose that we saw fishing boats with the latest in radar equipment and fishing gear launched month after month and put out to sea only to return without a catch - What excuse would we take for this barrenness? Yet thousands of churches see empty altars week after week and year after year and cover this sterile situation by misapplying the Scriptures. "My Word ... shall not return unto me void." Incidentally, this seems to be one of the very few texts that the dispensationalists forgot to tell us was written to the Jews!
The ugly fact is that the altar fires are either out or burning very low. The prayer meeting is dead or dying. By our attitude to prayer we tell God that was what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh. What church ever asks its candidating ministers what time they spend in prayer? Ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen - degrees or no degrees. Where are our unctionized pulpit crusaders? Preachers who should be fishing for men are not too often fishing for compliments from men. Preachers used to sow seed; now they string intellectual pearls.
Away with palsied, powerless preaching which is unmoving because it was born in a tomb instead of a womb and nourished in a fireless, prayerless soul. We may preach and perish but we cannot pray and perish. If God called us to the ministry, then I contend that we should be unctionized. With all my getting, get unction, lest barren altars be the badge of our unctionless intellectualism.
~Leonard Ravenhill~
(The End)
The Cinderella of the Church today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy, neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel!!
The offense of prayer is that it does not essentially tie in to mental efficiency. That is not to say that prayer is a partner to mental sloth. But in these days, efficiency and smartness are at a premium. Prayer is conditioned to one thing alone, and that is to spirituality. One does not need to be spiritual to preach, that is, to make and deliver sermons of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude. By a combination of memory, knowledge, ambition, personality, plus well-lined book shelves,self-confidence and a sense of having arrived - the pulpit is yours almost anywhere these days. Preaching of the type mentioned affects men; prayer affects God. Preaching affects time; prayer affects eternity. The pulpit can be a shop window to display our talents, the closet speaks death to display.
The tragedy of this last hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving our too many dead sermons to too many dead people. There is a strange thing that I have seen even in the fundamentalist circles: it is preaching without unction. What is unction? I hardly know what it is, but I know what it is not, or at least I know when it is not upon my own soul. Preaching without unction kills instead of giving life. The unctionless preacher is a savor of death unto death. The Word does not live unless the unction is upon the preacher. Preacher, with all thy getting, get unction!
Brethren, we could well manage to be half as intellectual if we were twice as spiritual. Preaching is a spiritual business. A sermon born in the head reaches the head. A sermon born in the heart reaches the heart. A spiritual preacher will under God produce spiritually-minded people. Unction is not a gentle dove beating her wings against the bars outside of the preacher's soul; rather she must be pursued and won. Unction cannot be learned, only earned by prayer. Unction is God's knighthood for the soldier-preacher who has wrestled in prayer and gained the victory. Victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet. The meeting is won or lost before the preacher's foot enters the pulpit. Unction is like perfume. Unction is like dynamite. Unction comes not by the medium of the bishop's hands, neither does it mildew when the preacher is cast into prison. Unction will pierce and percolate. It will sweeten and soften. When the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony heart, unction will succeed.
What a fever of church building there is just now, yet without unctionized preachers these altars will never see anxious penitents. Suppose that we saw fishing boats with the latest in radar equipment and fishing gear launched month after month and put out to sea only to return without a catch - What excuse would we take for this barrenness? Yet thousands of churches see empty altars week after week and year after year and cover this sterile situation by misapplying the Scriptures. "My Word ... shall not return unto me void." Incidentally, this seems to be one of the very few texts that the dispensationalists forgot to tell us was written to the Jews!
The ugly fact is that the altar fires are either out or burning very low. The prayer meeting is dead or dying. By our attitude to prayer we tell God that was what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh. What church ever asks its candidating ministers what time they spend in prayer? Ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen - degrees or no degrees. Where are our unctionized pulpit crusaders? Preachers who should be fishing for men are not too often fishing for compliments from men. Preachers used to sow seed; now they string intellectual pearls.
Away with palsied, powerless preaching which is unmoving because it was born in a tomb instead of a womb and nourished in a fireless, prayerless soul. We may preach and perish but we cannot pray and perish. If God called us to the ministry, then I contend that we should be unctionized. With all my getting, get unction, lest barren altars be the badge of our unctionless intellectualism.
~Leonard Ravenhill~
(The End)
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Activity Is Not Enough (and others)
Activity Is Not Enough
Those who try to give warnings to the Christian church are never very popular. Still, I must voice the caution that our craze for "activity" brings very few enriching benefits into our Christian circles. Look into the churches, and you will find groups of half-saved, half-sanctified, carnal people who know more about social niceties than they do about the New Testament. It is a fact that many of our church folks are activists engaged in many religious journeys - but they do not seem to move up any closer to Jesus in heart and in spirit. This modern religious emphasis on activity reminds me of the Japanese mice I have seen in the pet store windows. They are called waltzing mice - but they do not waltz. They just run continually! Many in our churches hope to have a part in "something big and exciting." But God calls us back - back to the simplicity of the faith; back to the simplicity of Jesus Christ and His unchanging Person!
~A. W. Tozer~
____________________________
Accountability to God
"And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27).
It was the belief in the accountability of man to his maker that made America a great nation. Among those earlier leaders was Daniel Webster whose blazing eyes and fiery oratory often held the senate spellbound. In those days the Congress was composed of strong, noble statemen who carried the weight of the nation in their hearts and minds.
Someone asked: "Mr. Webster, what do you consider the most serious thought that has ever entered your mind?"
"The most solemn thought that has ever entered my mind is my accountability to my maker," he replied.
Men like that cannot be corrupted and bought. They do not have to worry if someone listens to their telephone calls. What they were in character and in deportment resulted from their belief that they would finally be accountable to God.
"Lord, help me to live my life today in such a way that, should You call me tonight to stand before You and give account, I would have nothing of which I would need to be ashamed. Amen"
~A. W. Tozer~
____________________________
A New Type of Preacher
"But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God" (Acts 20:24).
If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be by other means than any now being used. If the Church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries our his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting.
Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many), he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom. Such a man is likely to e lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the One and the salvation of the other. But he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath.
"Lord, in the first half of this current century this need is ever greater. Send to Your church today many who have "seen visions of God and ... heard a voice from the Throne." Amen
~A. W. Tozer~
_______________________________
A Closed Mouth and Silent Heart
"My heart was hot within me; while I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue ..." (Psalm 39:3).
Prayer among evangelical Christians is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. Almost every book on prayer deals with the "get" element mainly. How to get things we want from God occupies most of the space. Now, we gladly admit that we may ask for and receive specific gifts and benefits in answer to prayer, but we must never forget that the highest kind of prayer is never the making of requests. Prayer at its holiest moment is the entering into God to a place of such blessed union as makes miracles seem tame and remarkable answers to prayer appear something very far short of wonderful by comparison.
Holy men of soberer and quieter times than ours knew well the power of silence. David said, "I was dumb with silence. I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me; while I was musing the fire burned; then spake I with my tongue." There is a tip here for God's modern prophets. The heart seldom gets hot while the mouth is open. A closed mouth before God and silent heart are indispensable for the reception of certain kinds of truth. No man is qualified to speak who has not first listened.
"Lord, teach me to close my mouth. I love to preach; You've given me opportunities to teach; I'm called on to dispense advice and counsel. But the sitting in silence before You, with my mouth closed - I don't do nearly enough of that. Amen"
~A. W. Tozer~
______________________________
A Believing Remnant
What is God trying to do with the believing people? - the Bible calls us a remnant according to grace, believers taken out of the great, teeming swarm of so-called religious people in today's world. I am inclined to join others in wondering if the Lord is postponing His coming because He is trying to get His Bride ready? For years it has been the popular idea in evangelical Christianity that the whole body of believers in Christ would rise like a flock of frightened birds when the Lord comes. But A. B. Simpson and William MacArthur and others in the past generation said, "Oh no! The Lord will take with Him those who are prepared and ready for His coming!" I do not presume to give an answer satisfying to everyone in our churches; But I know that many Christians are too smug about this, saying in effect: "I am converted to Christ through grace, so I can live as I please!" Of some things we cannot be dogmatic; but we know this for sure - God has no halfway house between heaven and hell where He takes us to fumigate us!"
~A. W. Tozer~
Those who try to give warnings to the Christian church are never very popular. Still, I must voice the caution that our craze for "activity" brings very few enriching benefits into our Christian circles. Look into the churches, and you will find groups of half-saved, half-sanctified, carnal people who know more about social niceties than they do about the New Testament. It is a fact that many of our church folks are activists engaged in many religious journeys - but they do not seem to move up any closer to Jesus in heart and in spirit. This modern religious emphasis on activity reminds me of the Japanese mice I have seen in the pet store windows. They are called waltzing mice - but they do not waltz. They just run continually! Many in our churches hope to have a part in "something big and exciting." But God calls us back - back to the simplicity of the faith; back to the simplicity of Jesus Christ and His unchanging Person!
~A. W. Tozer~
____________________________
Accountability to God
"And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27).
It was the belief in the accountability of man to his maker that made America a great nation. Among those earlier leaders was Daniel Webster whose blazing eyes and fiery oratory often held the senate spellbound. In those days the Congress was composed of strong, noble statemen who carried the weight of the nation in their hearts and minds.
Someone asked: "Mr. Webster, what do you consider the most serious thought that has ever entered your mind?"
"The most solemn thought that has ever entered my mind is my accountability to my maker," he replied.
Men like that cannot be corrupted and bought. They do not have to worry if someone listens to their telephone calls. What they were in character and in deportment resulted from their belief that they would finally be accountable to God.
"Lord, help me to live my life today in such a way that, should You call me tonight to stand before You and give account, I would have nothing of which I would need to be ashamed. Amen"
~A. W. Tozer~
____________________________
A New Type of Preacher
"But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God" (Acts 20:24).
If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be by other means than any now being used. If the Church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries our his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting.
Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many), he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom. Such a man is likely to e lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the One and the salvation of the other. But he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath.
"Lord, in the first half of this current century this need is ever greater. Send to Your church today many who have "seen visions of God and ... heard a voice from the Throne." Amen
~A. W. Tozer~
_______________________________
A Closed Mouth and Silent Heart
"My heart was hot within me; while I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue ..." (Psalm 39:3).
Prayer among evangelical Christians is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. Almost every book on prayer deals with the "get" element mainly. How to get things we want from God occupies most of the space. Now, we gladly admit that we may ask for and receive specific gifts and benefits in answer to prayer, but we must never forget that the highest kind of prayer is never the making of requests. Prayer at its holiest moment is the entering into God to a place of such blessed union as makes miracles seem tame and remarkable answers to prayer appear something very far short of wonderful by comparison.
Holy men of soberer and quieter times than ours knew well the power of silence. David said, "I was dumb with silence. I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me; while I was musing the fire burned; then spake I with my tongue." There is a tip here for God's modern prophets. The heart seldom gets hot while the mouth is open. A closed mouth before God and silent heart are indispensable for the reception of certain kinds of truth. No man is qualified to speak who has not first listened.
"Lord, teach me to close my mouth. I love to preach; You've given me opportunities to teach; I'm called on to dispense advice and counsel. But the sitting in silence before You, with my mouth closed - I don't do nearly enough of that. Amen"
~A. W. Tozer~
______________________________
A Believing Remnant
What is God trying to do with the believing people? - the Bible calls us a remnant according to grace, believers taken out of the great, teeming swarm of so-called religious people in today's world. I am inclined to join others in wondering if the Lord is postponing His coming because He is trying to get His Bride ready? For years it has been the popular idea in evangelical Christianity that the whole body of believers in Christ would rise like a flock of frightened birds when the Lord comes. But A. B. Simpson and William MacArthur and others in the past generation said, "Oh no! The Lord will take with Him those who are prepared and ready for His coming!" I do not presume to give an answer satisfying to everyone in our churches; But I know that many Christians are too smug about this, saying in effect: "I am converted to Christ through grace, so I can live as I please!" Of some things we cannot be dogmatic; but we know this for sure - God has no halfway house between heaven and hell where He takes us to fumigate us!"
~A. W. Tozer~
Monday, January 2, 2017
Victory In the Evil Day # 2
Victory In the Evil Day # 2
Now we must pass on to the "feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace". Speaking of the Korean Revival, Goforth wrote, "Everyone seemed almost pathetically eager to spread that glad-tidings. Even little boys would run up to people in the street and plead with them to accept Christ as their Saviour." The same determination to make Christ known was also seenduring the Methodist Revival. John Nelson was asked on one occasion by a Court of Law, "What were you put into prison for?" Back came the answer. "For warning people to flee from the wrath to come, and if this be a crime, I shall commit it again, unless you cut my tongue out; for it is better to die than to disobey God." The evangelism of our day is mainly evangelism by proxy and organization, and is practically fruitless. Instead of having triumphant issues it is generally quietly ironed out by enemy almost before the closing hymn of the campaign has died away. The procedure is generally the same. A local committee is formed who invite an evangelist or possibly a team, which is more in fashion, hire a hall, and inaugurate an advertising campaign. Meetings are held, attended mainly by professing Christians, and except for the occasional conversion of a prepared soul, the Churches settle down once more to their humdrum, lifeless routine. The genuine outsider remains uninterested, and probably quite unaware that meetings have even been held, still dead in sins.
Every individual Christian is responsible for the propagation of the Gospel, and every sanctified Christian must surely be possessed with a consuming passion to make Christ known. "Put shoes in his feet" commanded the Father concerning the returned prodigal; and I do not think it will be going too far to say that one of the evidences of a "life hid with Christ in God is an imperative constraint to use every opportunity that life offers to preach Christ. An evalgelizing Church will be a persecuted Church, but it will infallibly be a victorious Church; and make no mistake, no dispassionate evalgelism, however well organized, can hope to do work that can only be accomplished by individuals on fire for God.
"We say the world is dying," wrote Catherine Booth. "What for? Sermons? No! Periodicals? No! Religious stories? No! For fine-spun theories? No! For creeds and faiths? You might have them by the dozen. What is it dying for? Downright, straight-forward, honest, loving, earnest testimony about what God can do for souls." These are simple expedients for a victorious stand in the "evil day", but they are God's expedients and we ignore them at our peril.
And now for faith, and how closely is each bit of armor linked to the others. I often think that we might do well to read Hebrews 11 through again and again until the shame of our doubts, and camouflage eat into our hearts, and we are utterly humbled before God. The epitaph of the generation which perished in the wilderness might well be written over our day, "They limited the Holy One of Israel". There seems to be no sense of expectancy abroad in the Church. We find it necessary to make excuses, and blame conditions, circumstances, men and so on, just ; as if the Almighty were not in His Heaven, and our conquering Saviour at His right hand. Ours is a day of human expedients, and the adversary has seen to it that the Church has not escaped the crippling taint of the materialism, which characterizes the main currents of modern thought. He knows well that whole-hearted faith in God and Him alone can send all his schemes awray, and smash the powers of his legions. He has made capital out of the way in which the preaching of the Cross has been neglected, because hidden in such preaching is the secret of real faith."I am crucified ... the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God ..." (Galatians 2:20). It is no use trying to work up faith, it is the product of the life of the Son of God within, one of the fruits of the Spirit. How sad it is to see spiritual teaching running in double harness with practical unbelief, and faith placed in means rather than in the unaided ability of God. "The believer", writes Upham, "Must be willing in the exercise of faith in the mediatorial arrangements and provision, not only to receive forgiveness from Him, but everything else, making God's will the guide of his actions, and God's promises the support of his expectations. He must be willing to be transferred from the dead life of self, to the living life of universal love; from the center of the created, to the center of the uncreated, from the hope founded in men, to the true and unchangeable hope in God." Here is a shield from which the shafts of the enemy fall harmless,and covered by which the Christian soldier may stand firm, and see the triumph of the Lord.
Salvation is the final piece of defensive armor mentioned. The Lord Jesus Christ has been raised up to be a Prince and a Saviour, and satan's main objective is to thwart His gracious saving work which has its source in Calvary, and Calvary alone. Ever since the day when the Epistle to the Galatians was written he has exploited a favorite device to reach his objective here. He has used his influence to propagate a mixture of faith and works, of grace and law. Today this mixture may be seen even in the soundest Churches, and feebleness in witness is the only possible corollary to such a state of affairs. Listen to Edward Bickersteth, "There is no mixed plan of justification", he wrote. "Those who are expecting to be justified partly by their own works and partly by Christ, who suppose that He will make up what is deficient in their righteousness, are, in reality seeking their salvation from the law. The foundation of their hope is laid on a principle which rejects the great distinguishing sentiments of the gospel. Christ profits them nothing; they will be condemned as transgressors of the law, as unbelievers in the gospel. They may ascribe all their works to God, and thank Him,as the Pharisee did, for enabling them to do those works; but all will not avail...". These are strong words, but no stronger than those of Scripture. Did not Paul point out that his preaching on this very theme brought him persecution because of the offense of the Cross? Men will readily accept teaching that leaves them something in which to glory, but stumble at the Cross as the sole basis of God's working in their lives. Any adulteration of the Bible plan of salvation, any encroachment on the holy ground of the sphere of authority of the Son of God, at once grieves the Holy Spirit, and renders both life and preaching fruitless and barren. "Christ crucified" we are told "is to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 2:23-24).It is by virtue of union with Him, maintained as a constant attitude,and inwrought by the Holy Spirit, that we live as Christians, and serve God acceptably,and in this way alone. Our battle cry must be "Immanuel" if it is to strike any terror into the heart of our enemy. Salvation by Jesus alone is the one key that can unlock the prisons of satan's captives.
I have no space in which to deal with the one offensive weapon, "The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God", or with prayer as the method of our campaigning. It must suffice to say that the gross ignorance of Scripture, and shameful neglect of Prayer in our Churches are possibly the most disquieting signs of our day. Until these wrongs are righted, and the Church rises up clad in the panoply of God the evil day will not be illuminated by any rays of light, and the foe will remain complete master of the field. The solemn fact seems to be that victory "in the evil day" is one of those deeds that we may perform, or ingloriously and ignominiously fail to achieve. We are told quite explicitly what must be born in order that triumph may be gained.
"Take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand" (Ephesians 6:13). Shall we not therefore examine ourselves, and ask, "Are we standing thus unshaken, with our eyes fixed on the Lion of the tribe of Judah? If not for our own sakes, then for the sake of those still in darkness for whom Christ died. Shall we not set about arming ourselves with all the zeal we can command, remembering Paul's shout of triumph, "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
~Jessie Penn-Lewis~
(The End)
Now we must pass on to the "feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace". Speaking of the Korean Revival, Goforth wrote, "Everyone seemed almost pathetically eager to spread that glad-tidings. Even little boys would run up to people in the street and plead with them to accept Christ as their Saviour." The same determination to make Christ known was also seenduring the Methodist Revival. John Nelson was asked on one occasion by a Court of Law, "What were you put into prison for?" Back came the answer. "For warning people to flee from the wrath to come, and if this be a crime, I shall commit it again, unless you cut my tongue out; for it is better to die than to disobey God." The evangelism of our day is mainly evangelism by proxy and organization, and is practically fruitless. Instead of having triumphant issues it is generally quietly ironed out by enemy almost before the closing hymn of the campaign has died away. The procedure is generally the same. A local committee is formed who invite an evangelist or possibly a team, which is more in fashion, hire a hall, and inaugurate an advertising campaign. Meetings are held, attended mainly by professing Christians, and except for the occasional conversion of a prepared soul, the Churches settle down once more to their humdrum, lifeless routine. The genuine outsider remains uninterested, and probably quite unaware that meetings have even been held, still dead in sins.
Every individual Christian is responsible for the propagation of the Gospel, and every sanctified Christian must surely be possessed with a consuming passion to make Christ known. "Put shoes in his feet" commanded the Father concerning the returned prodigal; and I do not think it will be going too far to say that one of the evidences of a "life hid with Christ in God is an imperative constraint to use every opportunity that life offers to preach Christ. An evalgelizing Church will be a persecuted Church, but it will infallibly be a victorious Church; and make no mistake, no dispassionate evalgelism, however well organized, can hope to do work that can only be accomplished by individuals on fire for God.
"We say the world is dying," wrote Catherine Booth. "What for? Sermons? No! Periodicals? No! Religious stories? No! For fine-spun theories? No! For creeds and faiths? You might have them by the dozen. What is it dying for? Downright, straight-forward, honest, loving, earnest testimony about what God can do for souls." These are simple expedients for a victorious stand in the "evil day", but they are God's expedients and we ignore them at our peril.
And now for faith, and how closely is each bit of armor linked to the others. I often think that we might do well to read Hebrews 11 through again and again until the shame of our doubts, and camouflage eat into our hearts, and we are utterly humbled before God. The epitaph of the generation which perished in the wilderness might well be written over our day, "They limited the Holy One of Israel". There seems to be no sense of expectancy abroad in the Church. We find it necessary to make excuses, and blame conditions, circumstances, men and so on, just ; as if the Almighty were not in His Heaven, and our conquering Saviour at His right hand. Ours is a day of human expedients, and the adversary has seen to it that the Church has not escaped the crippling taint of the materialism, which characterizes the main currents of modern thought. He knows well that whole-hearted faith in God and Him alone can send all his schemes awray, and smash the powers of his legions. He has made capital out of the way in which the preaching of the Cross has been neglected, because hidden in such preaching is the secret of real faith."I am crucified ... the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God ..." (Galatians 2:20). It is no use trying to work up faith, it is the product of the life of the Son of God within, one of the fruits of the Spirit. How sad it is to see spiritual teaching running in double harness with practical unbelief, and faith placed in means rather than in the unaided ability of God. "The believer", writes Upham, "Must be willing in the exercise of faith in the mediatorial arrangements and provision, not only to receive forgiveness from Him, but everything else, making God's will the guide of his actions, and God's promises the support of his expectations. He must be willing to be transferred from the dead life of self, to the living life of universal love; from the center of the created, to the center of the uncreated, from the hope founded in men, to the true and unchangeable hope in God." Here is a shield from which the shafts of the enemy fall harmless,and covered by which the Christian soldier may stand firm, and see the triumph of the Lord.
Salvation is the final piece of defensive armor mentioned. The Lord Jesus Christ has been raised up to be a Prince and a Saviour, and satan's main objective is to thwart His gracious saving work which has its source in Calvary, and Calvary alone. Ever since the day when the Epistle to the Galatians was written he has exploited a favorite device to reach his objective here. He has used his influence to propagate a mixture of faith and works, of grace and law. Today this mixture may be seen even in the soundest Churches, and feebleness in witness is the only possible corollary to such a state of affairs. Listen to Edward Bickersteth, "There is no mixed plan of justification", he wrote. "Those who are expecting to be justified partly by their own works and partly by Christ, who suppose that He will make up what is deficient in their righteousness, are, in reality seeking their salvation from the law. The foundation of their hope is laid on a principle which rejects the great distinguishing sentiments of the gospel. Christ profits them nothing; they will be condemned as transgressors of the law, as unbelievers in the gospel. They may ascribe all their works to God, and thank Him,as the Pharisee did, for enabling them to do those works; but all will not avail...". These are strong words, but no stronger than those of Scripture. Did not Paul point out that his preaching on this very theme brought him persecution because of the offense of the Cross? Men will readily accept teaching that leaves them something in which to glory, but stumble at the Cross as the sole basis of God's working in their lives. Any adulteration of the Bible plan of salvation, any encroachment on the holy ground of the sphere of authority of the Son of God, at once grieves the Holy Spirit, and renders both life and preaching fruitless and barren. "Christ crucified" we are told "is to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 2:23-24).It is by virtue of union with Him, maintained as a constant attitude,and inwrought by the Holy Spirit, that we live as Christians, and serve God acceptably,and in this way alone. Our battle cry must be "Immanuel" if it is to strike any terror into the heart of our enemy. Salvation by Jesus alone is the one key that can unlock the prisons of satan's captives.
I have no space in which to deal with the one offensive weapon, "The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God", or with prayer as the method of our campaigning. It must suffice to say that the gross ignorance of Scripture, and shameful neglect of Prayer in our Churches are possibly the most disquieting signs of our day. Until these wrongs are righted, and the Church rises up clad in the panoply of God the evil day will not be illuminated by any rays of light, and the foe will remain complete master of the field. The solemn fact seems to be that victory "in the evil day" is one of those deeds that we may perform, or ingloriously and ignominiously fail to achieve. We are told quite explicitly what must be born in order that triumph may be gained.
"Take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand" (Ephesians 6:13). Shall we not therefore examine ourselves, and ask, "Are we standing thus unshaken, with our eyes fixed on the Lion of the tribe of Judah? If not for our own sakes, then for the sake of those still in darkness for whom Christ died. Shall we not set about arming ourselves with all the zeal we can command, remembering Paul's shout of triumph, "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
~Jessie Penn-Lewis~
(The End)
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