America, Don't Be Ashamed of Jesus!

America, Don't Be Ashamed of Jesus!by Walter A. Maier (1893-1950)

"I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the 
power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth."
                                                        —Romans 1:16 

A few months before Charles Darwin, often called "the Father of Evolution," died, he was visited by Lady Hope. In a signed statement this titled English woman tells how she found the scientist, who had flatly denied Scripture, propped up in his bed, reading the very Book he had attacked, the Bible. Calmly, yet forcefully he spoke on the guidance offered by the sacred Volume. He bemoaned the fact that people had accepted his theories regarding man's origin as assured truth. Then he suddenly asked Lady Hope: "I have a summer house in the garden which holds almost thirty people...Tomorrow afternoon I should like the servants on the place, some tenants, and a few of the neighbors to gather there. Will you speak to them?" "What shall I speak about?" Lady Hope inquired. Clearly, emphatically he replied, "Jesus Christ and His salvation," adding in a lower tone, "Is not that the best theme?" Thus, with death approaching, did Charles Darwin, evolutionist and denier of the Bible, acclaim the Lord Jesus. 

This same eleventh-hour seeking refuge in Christ occurs every day along the far-flung battle lines of the Second World War. Why is it that a sailor from a torpedoed ship, rescued after floating eighteen days off Australia, cries out, "You can't be an atheist on a rubber raft!"? Wtiy was it that when the Japanese bombardment began, soldiers on Corregidor, even those otherwise irreligious, fell on their knees before God? Why, during a recent blackout, did New York hotel guests telephone the desk for Bibles? Must we not conclude that, as danger and death approach, men usually banish their boasting ridicule of religion and humble themselves before their Maker? 

How tragic, then, that even the disasters of war have not thus shocked all our people into a sense of utter dependence on Christ! Masses are crowding bars, night clubs, and places of sinful amusement, while across the Pacific American soldiers daily lay down their lives. Millions, with fatter pay envelopes than they have ever received before, are drinking, gambling, and carousing, while the sea daily takes its toll in the flower of American youth. We dare not permit pleasure to go on as usual. In this critical hour we need serious thought and especially a humble, prayerful return to the Lord. Therefore, though unbelievers reject Christ, skeptics question His Gospel, paganized thinkers ridicule His promises, atheists deride His holy name, proud sinners spurn His mercy, the cry must be: 

Glory in His Gospel! Confess Him courageously! That loyalty to the Savior marked the mightiest of all apostles, Saint Paul, who exclaimed (Romans, chapter one, verse sixteen), 'I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth" heroic words which I give you not only as the text but also as the motto for a Christ-centered life.

I.   WE HAVE EVERY REASON TO GLORIFY HIS GOSPEL 

It took magnificent courage for Saint Paul to write the first Christians in the ghettoes and slums of Rome, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ!" and it required marvelous strength of faith for the apostles and those early disciples, surrounded by the pomp and display of imperial Rome, to stand up for Jesus and confess publicly that they were followers of a lowly Nazarene, who in distant, despised Galilee had died on the cross as a criminal. The declaration "I am a Christian" often meant the death sentence, even as Saint Paul paid for his loyalty with his life. 

How much easier it is for us to champion the crucified Savior! Thank God, we live in a country, founded by believers, that still grants full religious libertyl Thank God, we can read the records of nineteen centuries during the Gospel has mightily changed men's hearts, just as it has lifted nations from the depths of vice and degradation, transformed cannibals into humble believers, and, in short, enriched the world with its highest, noblest blessings. 

Despite all this the very word "gospel" is misunderstood, misapplied, and misinterpreted. A Minnesota architect maintains that, though most people in our country repeatedly use the word "gospel," they actually do not have a personal understanding of its meaning. Glibly men mention "the gospel of Communism," "the gospel of hatred," "the gospel of internationalism," and a hundred other "gospels." Pointedly Saint Paul warned, "Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed!" Yet false gospels have crept into churches: political gospels, social gospels, ethical gospels all as far from our Lord's saving Gospel as blackest night is from brightest noon. Why do we not stop such misuse? Why do we not restrict this precious word "gospel" to its original, true, and sacred sense? In the same way, we believe, many hear the names "Jesus" and "Christ," the words "redemption," "atonement," "salvation," and fail to grasp their full, deep, true wealth of comfort. 

So that on the great day of our Lord's reappearing you cannot say, "You preached, but you never showed me the way to life," let me tell you just what His Gospel is! It took six weeks for the bad news of the Solomon Islands naval encounters to reach our people, but in less than six seconds this glorious message can be heard around the world. It is the "good news" (that is the original meaning of "Gospel"), the best news anyone can ever receive, the assurance that Jesus Christ, the Son of the Almighty and the Son of the Virgin, moved by unmeasurable love, came into this sin-saturated world, lived His life among sin-bound men and died on the sin-cursed cross, all to remove your transgressions and grant you pardon, eternal salvation, and heaven itself! Though blinded, willful enemies of the faith try to change or alter, add or detract, question or quibble, this is how the Scripture explains the Gospel: "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life!' 

Never since Saint Paul's day has the Gospel been proclaimed with the clarity and conviction shown by that mighty spiritual leader whose work millions commemorate this Sunday Martin Luther, reformer of the Church and restorer of New Testament Christianity. Just four and one quarter centuries ago yesterday he started the titanic task of restoring the Gospel. While time restrictions prevent us from broadcasting his immortal Ninety-five Theses, or religious truths, by which that earth-shaking Reformation began, we can present nine and five theses reemphasizing the glorious truths which Luther rediscovered and courageously restated. Here they are: First, the nine theses, or facts, which explain our redemption: 

1. "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" that is, lost the holiness with which the Lord created them. This is Bible truth. 

2. Unforgiven sin is punished by eternal death in hell Scripture, which has never made a mistake and never will, warns, "The wages of sin is death." 

3. No man can remove his own transgressions, make himself pure and spotless in Heaven's sight. "Can...the leopard" change "his spots?' Holy Writ demands, to show how utterly impossible it is for us to cleanse our stained souls. 

4. Nor can even saints or angels take away our transgressions. Revealed truth assures us that no man can "redeem his brother nor give to God a ransom for him." 

5. Only the Almighty can remove sin's curse. If there is to be hope for men and women burdened with many and terrifying transgressions, they must find it in the God who cries out to a world of anguish and evil, "In Me is thine help!" 

6. God not only can save us; He has saved us. He sent His Son to fulfill the Law we had broken, to assume the punishment of our iniquity, as our Substitute to pay the death penalty of all our guilt, so that, beholding the cross, we know, He "was delivered for our offenses." 

7. Through faith in the Crucified and through faith alone we know that our sins are removed forever. The Bible promises, "There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" 

8. By accepting the Savior we who were "children of wrath" have become "children of God" who live under divine love, guidance, and protection. 

9. By believing this glorious Gospel heaven is ours; for if we remain faithful to the end, God has promised us the "crown of life" eternal amid the indescribable radiance of our celestial homeland. 

These are nine facts of the Gospel, As I repeat them I am sure some of my Modernist friends are shaking their heads either in protest or in condescending wonder. I can hear them call these Gospel truths "old-fashioned," "out of date," "narrow," "bigoted." Yet the only message which can turn souls from hell to heaven is this old but ever new Gospel, of which proud, self-sufficient men are ashamed, but for which the contrite can never thank God sufficiently. 

There is more to Christ's Gospel, however. Here are five additional theses, divine truths, showing its glorious grace: 

1. The blood-bought, cross-gained salvation is for you, each one of you individually. Our text offers its blessing "to everyone that believeth." You may be on the lowest rungs of human society, cut off from your fellow men because of your misdeeds. (I am now thinking of the triple murderess in the Ohio penitentiary at St. Mary's, who every Sunday urges the women convicts to hear our radio message. I have in mind a young man in the Jefferson City, Missouri penitentiary, serving his second sentence, who recently wrote me that he had altogether forgotten Jesus until he heard our broadcast, when he pledged himself never to reject his Savior again.) You may be soldiers or civilians, rich or poor, white or black, yellow or red; yet each of you can say, "This is my Gospel, my Christ, my Savior." 

2. You can approach Christ despite the multiplied misdeeds in your past life. You can come just as you are, unclean, impure, unworthy, to learn, "Though your sins be as scarlet., they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." 

3. Your redemption is free. You cannot buy your salvation, for Christ has paid everything. One drop of His precious blood can outbalance all your transgressions, for here is the unbreakable promise: "The Hood of Jesus Christ His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." 

4. To receive the full Gospel blessing you need only believe, only approach God as a poor, miserable sinner who accepts the Savior's grace. Divine truth assures us, "By grace are ye saved, through faith." 

5. Your forgiveness is unquestioned and positive. Our text calls the Gospel "the power of God" not of man. "Heaven" itself "and earth shall pass away 9 before this supreme pledge is violated. 

These five theses present to you the most sacred and sublime love which even God Almighty can give. For your souls' salvation I ask you to study their life-and-death certainty. Wherever you are, let me direct to your home one of the thousands of pastors who work together with me for this same glorious Gospel and who can help you declare in the fervor of sincere faith, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ"! 

II WE HAVE NO REASON TO BE ASHAMED OF HIS GOSPEL 

Now, with all the pardon and perfect peace Jesus can speak into sorrowing, aching hearts; with all the light His Gospel offers for life's darkest hours, should we not expect that every person on earth would accept His message as the highest good and the greatest blessing? Did you ever hear of anyone being ashamed of the friend who rescued him from death? Have you ever met a Negro whose heart is not moved by gratitude toward Abraham Lincoln, a true American who does not honor Washington's heroic work? Have you ever read of a nation which does not pay tribute to those who fought and fell in its defense? Why, then, with Christ offering deliverance from death's grip, sin's slavery, hell's tyranny, do millions blasphemously reject Him? How does it happen that some theological seminaries in the United States have not one man on their faculties who believes in the inerrancy of the Scriptures or in Jesus' atoning death and life-giving resurrection? 

How can we account for the fact that Christ is pushed aside in many modern churches which ban all hymns concerning the cross and the blood? Why do we sometimes behold, even in Gospel churches, lukewarmness and indifference toward the Savior? Why does a nation as wealthy as ours rob God? (If our people gave only 10 per cent of their income for religious purposes, the churches would have $4,000,000,000 annually for the extension of the Kingdom. Actually they receive only a fraction of that amount.) Why is it that a country founded by Christian pioneers, settled by Christian colonists, developed by Christian frontiersmen, richly endowed as no other nation in any other part of the world or in any previous age, now has more unbelievers, more public enemies of Jesus, than ever before? 

Ask the large group of those who, despite the appeals of this "Go to Church Sunday," have kept their distance from every place of worship, why they are ashamed of the Gospel, and they will answer, "Christianity has failed because it has not prevented this World War." Nothing could be more unfair than to cry out, "The churches have been tried and failed in this crisis." Rather should we admit that our age suffers its sorrows because it has failed to try Christianity. The postman recently brought a letter with one-cent postage due to a Duxbury, Massachusetts man, who refused to accept it and pay the penny. Back it went to the Dead Letter Office, where it was found to contain $450. Does any one charge the United States 
postal system with failure when the fault lay entirely with the man who would not accept the letter? Why, then, blame Jesus for the war when multitudes within our boundaries spurn the free offer of His help and mention His name only in foul-mouthed profanity? Recently we read that the chaplain of the United States Senate died because a druggist had mistakenly compounded a prescription with fifteen times as much narcotic as the doctor had ordered. Does any sound-minded person hold 
the doctor responsible for that pharmacist's mistake? 

Is it fair, then, to charge the Gospel with failure in this world of war, when many, ordained to preach the whole Bible, offer an erroneous substitute, a destructive counterfeit? If Jesus' Gospel were universally accepted and His teachings followed, there would have been no Second World War. But because men hate Christ and love sin; because selfishness, carnal ambition, avarice, lust, love of power, and worship of money make them trample the rights of their fellow men, the world has been turned into bloody shambles. Jesus pleads, "Love one another!" but willful unbelievers insist, "Hate one another!" Jesus gave the Golden Rule, but dictators lay down the rule of steel and blood and iron. 

Ask philosophical minds why they are ashamed of Christ, and they will demand in counterquestion: "How do you expect us to accept a religion in which a God permits war's terrors and agony? How can we harmonize the existence of pain and evil with the Christian faith?" Some of you likewise refuse to acclaim Jesus your Redeemer because you think that the Lord has dealt too cruelly with you. A dear one has been snatched from your side, and in stubborn resentment you demand: "How can there be a God if I must suffer this way? How can there be a Savior if I am plunged into this agony?" You have tried to settle these issues apart from the Word. If only you would realize that Jesus has the key and explanation of human suffering! Those who come to Him in faith know that each affliction is laid upon them, as the Lord's redeemed, by divine mercy instead of His anger, that trials which seem beyond analysis are the Almighty's way of purifying faith and strengthening trust. 

Again, ask proud enemies of our faith why they are hostile to the Gospel, and they will sneer: "Well, hasn't Christianity been rejected by outstanding scientists? Isn't it true that all great thinkers have discarded the Bible?" To both questions we answer with an emphatic "No!" Not only have leaders in every branch of learning been humble followers of the Lord Jesus, but today, during the heyday of unbelief and atheism, recognized teachers and intellectual leaders have come out strongly for Christ. Listen to these testimonies offered by men on the faculties of great American universities: From the University of Wisconsin: "In the Bible we find , . . our Savior, and eternal life through faith in Him"! From Ohio State University: "The Bible has shown me my sin with its terrifying consequences; but it has also brought me the direct comfort of the Savior who died for me on Calvary"! From Michigan State College: "The Bible reveals Christ and His vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind"! From Johns Hopkins University: "I believe that . . . the Son of God Himself came down to earth and by the shedding of His blood on the cross paid the infinite penalty of the guilt of the whole world"! From Temple University: "I have praised the Lord that as a physician He has given me the privilege of testifying to Christs saving grace"! From the University of Illinois: "ln Jesus Christ I have found my Savior and Lord, my Helper along the way. Without Him life would be empty and worthless, the load of sin ... still separating me from God"! 

If these and hundreds of other present-day scientists, far from being ashamed of Christ, acclaim Him the Savior, should you refuse to accept Him? Many who attack the Bible have never reverently studied His Word, and many who assail His Word are led by blind and willful ignorance. Popular magazines this month bring the confession of a physician under the title "I Was an Atheist Until" -until that doctor took time to examine the human body and study the miracles which led him to conclude that there must be a divine Creator. If you who place question marks behind the glorious truth of the Savior's atonement would only stop locking the Holy Spirit out of your heart and take time to consider the "many infallible proofs" of His forgiving, sustaining love, you, too, could write a glorious chapter in your life's story entitled, "1 Was an Atheist-Until" -until I studied God's Word and the evidences of Christianity." Do not be troubled by the fact that men with headline names often attempt to discredit our Lord! I remind you that before Pearl Harbor some of the enemies of the faith publicly urged our people under no circumstances to take arms in behalf of this nation. Of course, they have changed their advice now; but the point I wish to emphasize is this: if these false prophets in academic garb could be so utterly mistaken in matters of human life, dare you follow them in their poisonous, destructive teachings concerning the heavenly life? Rather and I am pleading particularly with you college men and women join those scientific leaders who with inner joy and spiritual conviction exulted, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ!" 

As men reject Jesus, they advance one excuse after the other. Many of their claims are dishonest; all of them are mistaken and destructive. Behind every refusal to accept the Gospel lies the love of sin, the unwillingness to serve God, the stubborn pride that will not repent. Christ is spurned and the appeal of His cross set aside because men love evil; because they want to serve the flesh; because the Savior is too lowly and humble, the Bible too stern and unbending in its denunciation of all wrong. Jesus says, se lf any man will come after Me, let him . . . take up his cross"; He insists, The "first shall be last"; He warns, "Ye must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God;" and since men prefer greatness, power, glamour, money, applause, the glorious Gospel of grace is contemptuously cast away. The consequence of that rejection, Jesus declares, is this: "Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven" "He that believeth not shall be damned." 

Thus once more I have laid before you this inescapable issue: Are you ashamed of Christ, or do you glory in His Gospel? I know that across the United States and Canada millions of you cling to the Savior as your only Salvation. God grant you continued loyalty and the determination to remain faithful always and everywhere! The Lord give you the courage to speak up in clarion voices, rebuking die enemies of the Cross, but testifying valiantly to the hope that is in you! Stand by us, my fellow redeemed, in this radio crusade dedicated to spread the message of Christ's atoning love! England, Scotland, and Ireland are literally pleading for this Gospel. Our Sunday evening short-wave transmissions to these countries bring us a flow of letters which urgently ask that we maintain and increase our trans-Atlantic mission of the air. Help us reach the young men in the American fighting forces, who are ready to give themselves for our cause! Last week a corporal at an Ohio airfield wrote me that he had been on the verge of taking his life, when he heard our appeal to behold Christ and to trust Him. That changed everything, he said, and he has promised with God's help to follow in the Savior's footsteps. Give us the means for reaching all our young soldiers! 

Some of you had not accepted Jesus as your Savior, were still ashamed of Him, when this broadcast began. Now that you have heard the message of His love for you; now that you have beheld the crucified Son of God, wounded, bleeding, nail-pierced, blood-streaked, death-marked, can you say, "I am ashamed of Him'? May the Holy Spirit mercifully keep you from that terrifying denial! May He rather lead you (and I have prayed especially for those who once knew the Lord, but who followed the path of sin; for you who until this hour have neglected your soul and steadfastly turned from Christ), if necessary, through suffering, sorrow, and pain, but always from cross to crown! May He bring you, humble, repentant, yet trusting, joyful, to Calvary, where, your sins forgiven, your cares cast on Him, your hope strengthened by His unfailing promise, your faith exults: "Blessed Savior, how could I be ashamed of Thee and Thy Gospel, the promise of my forgiveness, life, salvation? O Jesus, precious Jesus, grant me constantly more of Thy love, as I give myself in soul and body, mind and spirit, to Thee now and forever!'' For heaven is yours when Christ thus becomes your Savior. God give you this unashamed, unhesitating, unending faith in the blessed Redeemer! Amen.  

WALTER A. MAIER (1893-1950)

Walter Maier held a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard and taught at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, but is best known for his worldwide radio broadcast, Bringing Christ To the Nations. He was heard in over 120 nations and by over twenty million souls. He was a Lutheran at a time when his denomination was denying the old time religion. He stood true, extolling the reliability of Scripture and man's need for the sacrifice of Christ.  His preaching was inspiring and direct.  Early in his ministry he won the Billings Prize in Oratory and used all of the rhetorical tools of the good communicator.  Billy Graham called him the greatest evangelist of the 20th century.  In the face of harsh opposition, he never dipped his colors or compromised his principles.

Pity Us (and other devotionals)

A.W. Tozer- A man of God

3 hrs · 

By accepting the world’s values, thinking its thoughts and adopting its ways we have dimmed the glory that shines overhead. We have not been able to bring earth to the judgment of heaven so we have brought heaven to the judgment of the earth. Pity us, Lord, for we know not what we do!‪#‎Tozer‬

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Real men read Pink (A.W. Pink)

51 mins · 

"When you are tempted to doubt the faithfulness of God, cry out, "Get thee hence, Satan." Though you cannot now harmonize God’s mysterious dealings with the avowals of His love, wait on Him for more light. In His own good time He will make it plain to you. "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" (John 13:7). The sequel will demonstrate that God has neither forsaken nor deceived His child. "And therefore will the LORD wait that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him" (Isa. 30:18)."

"Judge not the Lord by feeble sense

But trust Him for His grace,

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread,

Are rich with mercy, and shall break

In blessing o’er your head."

~ Arthur Pink, "Gleanings in the Godhead - The Faithfulness of God"

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A.W. Tozer

2 hrs · 

" Oh how big and broad and comprehensive and wonderful is the work of Christ. The way of the cross is still the path to spiritual power. So do not hide from it and do not allow yourself to be patted to sleep in a comfortable church, void of power and barren of fruit ! " A. W. Tozer

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Troubled Times

Today's reading: 1 Samuel 21:1-15; Psalm 56:1-13

As we arrive at 1 Samuel 21 we get a picture of David's first days of many running from Saul. He is in distress with no food or weapons, and even goes to the Philistine city of Gath. His situation is pretty awful. Yet through it all, he continues to trust God and look to Him alone. We see this wonderfully in Psalm 56 which David wrote in response to his experience in Gath. I love how verses 8-11 demonstrate how God's peace can be ours in the middle of our chaos.

How do you respond when life seems to spin out of control? Do you believe that God is for you ("This I know, that God is for me." Psalm 56:9)? What's one thing you learned from David in Psalm 56? Tami

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Hypocritical Prayer

BIBLE MEDITATION:
“I prayed unto the LORD my God, and made my confession…” Daniel 9:4

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:
The greatest thing we can do for America is to pray for America. I am convinced if there were ever a need for prayer, this is the hour. It’s one thing to criticize that our children cannot pray in school. But I think it is unmitigated hypocrisy to carp and criticize about children not being able to pray in school unless we ourselves are prayer warriors, don’t you? We must teach our children to pray in the home. We are unvarnished hypocrites to criticize, yet not teach our children to pray—by both gentle instruction and by example. Our children are watching us and will model our behavior.

ACTION POINT:
Teach your children how to pray in the home. Take them beyond “Now I lay me down to sleep.” We rattle off our little prayers. But have you really set your face to pray?

~Adrian Rogers~

In the End It Will Be Nothing But Christ

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son. (Hebrews 1:1,2 NIV)

What was the tragedy of the old Israel? Of course, the tragedy of the old Israel, finally, is their dismissal. Their dismissal: “The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” That happened! and it stands today. The kingdom of heaven taken away – not for that Israel, but for another! The tragedy of Israel is that they are dismissed from the dispensation, or the dispensational movement of God. This has lasted for two thousand years. How many more years we do not know, probably, not so long, but you leave that alone.

Here I am going to upset a lot of you: you leave Israel alone for the time being. You will only get into terrible confusion if you get down on this earth with an earth touch in these things.... You see, you go on like that and it leads to confusion if you come down onto this earth. Leave it alone and see what God is doing, and God is doing a spiritual thing, not a temporal thing. I could take an hour to enlarge upon that last phrase, “not a temporal thing.” Do you see, in the sovereign activities of God, that now He is confounding and confusing and breaking down all temporal representations of His heavenly kingdom?! Men are trying to set up local churches after New Testament order. You have never had more confusion in local churches than you have today. They are trying to set up things, constitute things, Christian movements, Christian institutions, Christian organizations, and they are all in confusion and do not know what to do with one another. You may think that is an exaggeration, but you see what I mean? – God is breathing upon every temporal representation in order to have a spiritual expression of Christ! That is the heart of what we are saying, and that is what is here.... This new Israel is so much greater than the old because Christ, this Messiah, is so much greater than their conception of a Messiah... I am talking about the greatness of this One Who is introduced in Hebrews: “God, ...hath at the end of these days spoken in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of...” an exclusive party? – No, “of all things.” That is Paul’s great word all the way through: “all things, ...all things, ...all things,” and in the end, “to sum up all things in Christ.” And if I need to safeguard, I am not talking about universalism. I am talking about God’s ultimate realm and sphere where it will be nothing but Christ.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

The Christian and the Non-Christian

The Christian and the Non-Christian

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
/..

“But ye have not so learned Christ.”

                                            —Ephesians 4:20

HERE WE COME TO A dramatic and almost an abrupt statement. The Apostle has been describing the kind of life which is lived by the "other Gentiles", the kind of life that these Ephesians Christians themselves used to live - the life still being lived by those of their compatriots and fellows who had not believed the gospel of Jesus Christ. And having finished his description he suddenly turns, and uses this word But. Now to get the full force of this, let us look at the statement again as a whole. "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ"; and then Paul goes on to say, "if so be that you have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus".

We come, then, to this extraordinary, dramatic, vivid, almost, I say, abrupt statement which the Apostle makes here. And it is obvious that he put it in this form quite deliberately, in order to call attention to it and to shock them, and in order to bring out the tremendous contrast that he has in mind. And therefore the emphasis must be placed both upon the but and upon the you. "But you" - "you have not so learned Christ": the you in contrast with those other Gentiles; and the but standing here as a great word of contrast to bring out this marked antithesis. What then do those two words suggest to us?

The first thing, surely, that they should convey to us is a feeling of relief and of thanksgiving. I start with this because I think that it is the thing that we should be conscious of first of all. We have followed the Apostle's masterly analysis, his psychological dissection of the life of the unbeliever, the pagan, the man who is not a Christian, and we see how it goes from bad to worse because his mind is wrong. He is in a state of darkness, the heart is affected, and he is alienated from God. We have also seen men giving themselves over, in their foulness and lasciviousness, to work all kinds of iniquity and uncleanness with greediness. We have been looking at it all and seeing it. And then, Paul says, "But you"! And at once we say, Well, thank God! we are no longer there, that is not our position. And this, I repeat, is the thing that must come first; we must feel a sense of relief and profound gratitude to God that we are covered by this But, that Paul is here turning from sin to salvation, and that we have experienced the change of which he is now going on to speak.

I emphasize this point because it seems to me that there is no better test of our Christian profession than our reaction to these words "But you". If we merely hold the truth theoretically in our minds this will not move us at all. If we have looked on at the description of sin merely in a kind of detached, scientific manner, or as the sociologist might do; if we have put down groups and categories of people, and have done it all in an utterly detached way, then we will have no sense of relief and of thanksgiving as we come to these words. But if we realise that all that was true of us; if we realise that we were in the grip and under the dominion of sin; if we realise that we still have to fight against it, then, I say, these words at once give us a sense of marvellous and wonderful relief. It is not the whole truth, of course, there is more to be said. But as we respond to these words, in our feelings, in our sensibilities, as well as with our minds, we are proclaiming whether we are truly Christian or not. We read these words of Paul, and then we read our newspapers, and as we look at what is going on all around us, we say, Yes, it is absolutely right and true, that is life in this world. And then we suddenly stop and say, Ah! but wait a minute, there is something else 1 - there is the Christian, there is the Christian Church, there is this new humanity that is in Christ! The other seems to be true of almost everybody in the world, but it is not, for "there is yet a remnant according to the election of grace"! Thank God! In the midst of all the darkness there is a glimmer of light. Christianity is a protest in that sense; something has happened, there is an oasis in the desert. Here it is; thank God for it! And therefore I am saying that we test ourselves along these lines. Here we have been travelling in this wilderness, in this desert, and it seems to be endless. There seems nothing to hope for. Suddenly we see it - "But you"! After all, there is a bridgehead from heaven in this world of sin and shame I But you! Relief! Thanksgiving! A sense of hope after all!

The words, "But you", of course, also mark the entry of the gospel. And I must confess that I am increasingly moved and charmed by the way in which this particular Apostle always brings in his gospel like this. We see him doing it in the fourth verse of his second chapter. He always does it in this way. There we read that terrifying passage in the first three verses, then suddenly, having said it all, Paul says, "But God"! - and in comes his gospel. And he is doing exactly the same thing here. This but, you see, this contrast, this disjunction, this is the Gospel, and it is something altogether different, it has nothing to do with this world and its mind and its outlook; it is something that comes in from above, and it brings with it a marvellous and a wonderful hope.

The Gospel always comes as a contrast. It is not an extension of human philosophy, it is not just a bit of an appendix to the book of life, or merely an addition to something that men have been able to evolve for themselves. No!  It is altogether from God, it is from above, it is from heaven, it is supernatural, miraculous, divine. It is this thing which comes in as light into the midst of darkness and hopelessness and unutterable despair. But it does come like that; and thank God, I say again, that it does.

The position we are confronted with is this. We are looking at the modern world in terms of this accurate description of it, and we see that everything that man has ever been able to think of has failed to cope with it. Is political action dealing with the moral situation? Is it dealing even with the international situation? Can education deal with it? Read your newspapers and you have your answer. Hooliganism is not confined to the uneducated. Take all your social agencies, everything man has ever been able to think of. How can it possibly deal with a situation such as that which we have been considering in verses 17, 18 and 19? When you are dealing with a darkened mind, with a hardened heart, with a principle of lasciviousness controlling the most powerful factors in man, all opposed to God, all vile and foul, what is the. value of a little moral talk and uplift? What is the power of any legislation? You cannot change men's nature by passing Acts of Parliament, by giving them new houses, or by anything you may do for them. There is only one thing that can meet such a situation; and thank God it can! "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," says this great Apostle, as he looks forward to a visit to the imperial city of Rome with all its grandeur and its greatness, as well as its sin and its foulness. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ", he says, and for this reason, "it is the power of God unto salvation". And because it is the power of God it holds out a hope even for men and women who have given themselves over, abandoned themselves, to the working of all uncleanness with greediness.

I have often said that there is nothing so romantic as the preaching of the gospel. You never know what is going to happen. 1 have this absolute confidence that if the vilest and the blackest character in this city of London today hears this message, even if he is the most abandoned wretch in the foulest gutter, I see a hope for him, because of the gospel, this but that comes in, this power of God! The gospel comes into the midst of despair and hopelessness; it comes in looking at life with a realistic eye. There is nothing, apart from the gospel, that can afford to be realistic; everything else has to try to persuade itself like a kind of self-hypnotism. Here is the only thing that can look at man as he is, at his very worst and blackest and at his most hopeless, and still address him. Why? Because the power of God is in it. And this is a power that can make men anew and re-fashion them after the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Apostle is about to tell us. It is the work of the Creator. So the Gospel comes in this way, and the words "But you" remind us of the whole thing.

But even more, and this is the point in particular that the Apostle himself is stressing here - these two words But you at once provide us with a perfect and a comprehensive description of the Christian. Paul has described the "other Gentiles"; he is now describing the Christian. What does he tell us about him? Obviously, in the first place, he tells us that the Christian is one who by definition has been separated from and taken out of that evil world. The "other Gentiles"? - that is how they are living. "But you"! There has been a separation, the Christian has been laid hold of, he has been dragged out of that, and he has been put into another position. He was once like others, but he is no longer like them. Clearly, becoming a Christian is the profoundest change in the world. That is where, I suppose, the final enemy of the Christian faith is morality. And that is why I sometimes feel that Thomas Arnold, of Rugby fame, was perhaps of all men in the last century the one who did the greatest harm. His teaching and the teaching of his followers has obliterated this particular point, this complete change, this translation, this movement. But it is this truth that is emphasised everywhere in the Bible about God's salvation. You find the Psalmist speaking of it; he talks about being lifted up out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and his feet being established upon the rock. He has had to be hauled up out of the slime, the horrible pit! the miry clay! taken hold of, lifted up, and set upon a rock, while his goings have been established on a different level. Now that is Christianity, and it is only as the Church comes back to the realization of it that there is any hope for revival at all.

To establish the point I am making, let us hear Paul, at the beginning of his Epistle to the Galatians. He is thanking God for His wonderful grace in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he puts it like this: "Who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world" (1 :4). That is why Christ died. The first object of His dying on the cross was that He might deliver His people from this present evil world; He takes hold of them and pulls them out of it. Listen to the Apostle again as he writes to the Colossians: "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." When you become a Christian you change your realm, you belong to a new kingdom; you are no longer in the kingdom of Satan, you belong to the kingdom of God and of His Christ; you are no longer in the kingdom of darkness, but you are in the kingdom of light. These are Paul's terms and every one of them emphasizes this movement, this translation. You are not simply improved a little bit just where you are; that is never the business of Christianity; it never does that. It is something new. And it is going to end in a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

The business of Christianity is not to improve the world. No! it is to take men out of the world, to save them from it, and to form this new realm, this new kingdom, and this new humanity. We must get hold of that idea. It is not a kind of Christianisation of the world that is taught in the Bible. People are to be taken out of it, to be separated from it, and to be translated into a different position. Peter puts it like this in the second chapter of his First Epistle: "Who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." The Lord takes us out of Egypt, and puts us into Canaan! It was not an improvement of the conditions in Egypt that happened under the Old Testament dispensation: on the contrary, the Israelites were taken out of Egypt, taken on their journey, and brought into Canaan. Peter very rightly goes on to address Christians as "strangers and pilgrims". "Dearly beloved", he says, "I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." We are only strangers in this world if we are Christians. Paul says the same thing to the Philippians in his third chapter: "Our citizenship is in heaven." Someone has translated it, "We are a colony of heaven", which amounts to the same thing. It means that our polity, as it were, our homeland, our seat of government, is there; our citizenship is in heaven! We are in this world still, but if we are Christians we do not belong to it; we do not belong to its mind, its outlook, its organisation; we are strangers and pilgrims, we are people away from home, we are people who are simply living here on a passport; we do not belong here. Our Lord has said it clearly for us in His great high-priestly prayer; He says, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world."

We must be clear about this. I am not saying that because of all that I have been quoting a Christian should not take part in politics or anything like that. It does not mean that at all, but it does mean that he is entirely separated in his being, in his essence and in his outlook. Because the Christian knows that this is still God's world which God is finally going to redeem, he believes that sin and evil must be controlled. In his view, politics and the whole of culture are negative and are simply designed to keep sin and evil within bounds, and to keep their manifestations from running riot. But what he does, he does as a stranger; he does it as a man who belongs to another realm, but who has pity upon this realm; and thus he gives his time and energies in an endeavour to keep evil within bounds. He does not put his faith in earthly things, he does not think that you can bring in a new Jerusalem by Acts of Parliament, as so many foolish people thought at the beginning of this century. He has no use for the (social' gospel, because it has always failed and always must fail: for it is based upon the fallacy of not realising that man's heart is hardened, and that his whole outlook is darkened. It is of all teachings the most fatuous. But the Christian has been separated from all such hopes. He has been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God's dear Son.

But these words of Paul show us another thing about the Christian and his character. Because of this translation that has taken place, the life of the Christian is to present a complete contrast to that other life. "But you; you have not so learned Christ." Paul puts the emphasis on the word so. It is not thus that you have learned Christ, says the Apostle. You have not learned Christ in such a way as to say, Well yes, I believe in Christ but I still go on living as I did before. Impossible! he says, Out upon the suggestion! He again uses litotes, one of his favourite figures of speech. "You have not so learned Christ" - that is a negative, is it not? What he means is something very positive. Litotes is a very good figure of speech to employ if you are anxious to bring out emphasis. Let me give you another familiar example of it. Take the one I have already quoted from in Romans 1:16 where the Apostle says, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ." What he means is that he is tremendously proud of it, that he has absolute confidence in it, and that he makes his boast in it. But he expresses it by an emphatic negative, not ashamed. Similarly, he says here, "You have not so learned Christ." By which he means that the very suggestion is utterly impossible; it is unthinkable; the thing is ludicrous, he says, you cannot possibly hold it for a moment if you have really understood these things. The Apostle is emphasising that the life of the Christian is to be altogether different from that of "other Gentiles". It is to suggest and to present the most complete and striking contrast to everything that is represented by that kind of worldly life. The life of the Christian is not to be something vague and indefinite, not something which is difficult to define, and difficult to recognise. According to Paul's teaching, and the teaching of the entire Bible, it is clear-cut and obvious - it stands out, it is perfectly definite, and anybody should be able to recognise it at a glance.

Let us look at some of the terms which are used in the Scripture to bring out this very point. Take the words that were used by our Lord Himself. He says that the Christian is to be the "salt of the earth". He says also that Christians are to be "the light of the world". The Apostle Paul uses similar words in writing to the Philippians. In the second chapter he tells them that they are to "shine" as "lights in the world" (A.V.). The picture is that the whole world is in darkness, absolutely dark, and would be universally dark were it not for the occasional star here and there shining. Lights in the heavens! The contrast between Christians and people who are not Christian is the contrast between light and darkness. Again, Christ says that when a man lights a candle he does not put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick that it may light the whole house. And He also says that His disciples are like "a city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid". It is there for all men to see. A Christian should be as impossible to hide as a city set on a hill. The whole terminology is designed to bring out these very contrasts. The whole thing is put again so perfectly in the passage in 2 Corinthians 6, where Paul writes, "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with darkness? What concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an unbeliever? Or what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?" So the Christian is one who stands out in society because he is a Christian. This does not mean that he will be angular or delight in being odd or make himself eccentric or foolish, but it does mean that as we read about our Lord that "He could not be hid", it is equally true about the Christian. When purity appears in the midst of impurity there is no need for it to exaggerate itself or to send a trumpeter before it to announce its presence, as the Pharisees did, as they made broad their phylacteries. No! Purity advertises itself: the contrast does it all.

Now this is the kind of thing that the Apostle is here stressing and impressing upon the Ephesians. He says, as it were, to them: It is unthinkable that you should live as the unbelievers do; your whole life and behaviour, your demeanour and deportment should suggest something which is marvellously and strangely different. I am emphasising, you see, that it should not be difficult for people to know that we are Christians. But I wonder whether it is? I wonder whether sometimes they are surprised when they are told that we are Christians? Is not this one of the tragedies of the age in which we five, that the line of demarcation between the church and the world has become so obscured and ill-defined and uncertain? I know that there is undoubtedly a reaction against a false Puritanism and I am not here to defend a false Puritanism; God forbid that I should! You notice that I call it a false Puritanism - a mere morality that has really lost contact with the truth.

It was much in evidence at the end of the Victorian era, and God forbid that we should have that mechanical religion back! But I am suggesting that in our reaction we have gone altogether too far to the other extreme and we have obscured something that is absolutely vital in the New Testament, namely, this line of demarcation between the world and the Church.

At one time it was customary for Protestantism to criticise Roman Catholicism on the ground that it mixed the two, and it undoubtedly does; but alas I Protestantism has followed suit and has done the same I The modern Christian seems to think that he is doing something wonderful when he behaves very much like the man of the world; he tries to argue that this is the way to win him. But he is not winning him! Our Lord could mix with publicans and sinners, but He was never mistaken for one of them; He was called the friend of publicans and sinners, but the contrast was there even in the criticism. And the point is that the true Christian, because of what has happened to him, because of this regeneration, because of the work of the Spirit, because he has been made anew, is of necessity a different man, and should show himself to be a different man.

But I will go further. Not only does the Christian know that he is different, the non-Christian also knows it. At once the Christian and the non-Christian are aware of a difference between themselves. They are aware of a lack of affinity. I want to press this, because it seems to me to be one of the most thorough-going tests we can ever apply to ourselves. Unless we are conscious of a lack of affinity with people who still belong to the world I cannot see that we are Christians at all. That does not mean that we cannot share certain things with them, that we cannot be pleasant, that we cannot pass the time of day with them, as it were. But it does mean that we are aware of a difference, of a barrier, that we belong to different realms and to different positions entirely. We can have social relations with non-Christians, but the whole time we are aware of this difference, we are not at home in that atmosphere. We may, for various reasons, have to be with them occasionally, but we are aware that we do not belong to their world. And they too are equally aware of the fact that we do not belong to it. And that is the thing that is so valuable, that even the non-Christian, the man of the world, expects the Christian to be different.

One of the greatest fallacies I have ever encountered in this respect was one that came in during the First World War. I describe it without mentioning the man most responsible for it; the individual as such does not matter, for we are not concerned with personalities but with principles. There was an outlook propagated by this particular man who argued like this. "Take those men in the trenches in the first world war; now" he said, "if we are going to influence those men when we go back into civilian life, we must show them that we really belong to them; so the way to do that, the way to win men to Christ, is to sit down and smoke Woodbines with them, and to use their language. If they curse and swear, let us curse and swear too; we are doing it for a good object, with a good intention; we will fraternise with them, we will show them that we are, after all, all of the same bunch, we belong together; and then if we only do that with them they will come crowding to our churches to listen." But, you know, they did not! And thank God they did not! The man of the world, the man who is still a sinner, expects the Christian to be different, and he does not respect very much the kind of Christian who is not different. We read the Gospels and we find that the most desperate cases drew near to the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because He was so different! I am not suggesting that there is a spark of divinity in fallen human nature, but I am suggesting that there is always a hopelessness in the life of sin, which somehow or another pays its tribute to purity and holiness and Christ-likeness. It knows it is different. And so you will often find in novels and stories that when certain brutal men are trying to make fun of a Christian, perhaps the greatest bully of all will come along and stop them and say, You must not do that, he is a good fellow. There is the difference, and I say that it is recognised on both sides.

But what are the things which thus differentiate us? Let me give you John Bunyan's answer to my question. I am saying that the Christian, because he is a Christian, is altogether unlike the man of the world and that he and the man of the world are aware of it. Let John Bunyan say it in his Pilgrim's Progress.

"Then I saw in my dream that when they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity"; (Paul speaks of men walking in the vanity of their minds!) - "and at the town there is a Fair kept, called Vanity Fair; it is kept all the year long; it beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where it is kept is lighter than Vanity; and also because all that is there sold, or that cometh thither, is vanity; as is the saying of the wise, "All that cometh is vanity".

"This Fair is no new-erected business, but a thing of ancient standing. I will shew you the original of it" (and he then quotes Ecclesiastes 1:2 and certain particular verses) "Almost five thousand years ago, there were Pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these two honest persons are; and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their companions, perceiving by the path that the Pilgrims made, that their way to the City lay through this Town of Vanity, they contrived here to set up a Fair; a Fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity, and that it should last all the year long. Therefore, at this Fair, are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts; as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not. And, moreover, at this Fair, there is at all times to be seen, juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind." (This is wonderful literature, is it not? It is still more wonderful spiritually.) "Here are to be seen too, and that for nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false swearers, and that of a blood-red colour.

"And, as in other Fairs of less moment, there are several rows, and streets, under their proper names, where such and such wares are vended; so here likewise you have the proper places, rows, streets (viz. countries and kingdoms), where the wares of this Fair are soonest to be found. Here is the Britain Row, the French Row, the Italian Row, the Spanish Row, the German Row, where several sorts of vanities are to be sold. But as, in other Fairs, some one commodity is the chief of all the Fair, so the ware of Rome and her merchandise is greatly promoted in this Fair; only our English nation, with some others, have taken a dislike thereat." (That was, remember, three hundred years ago!)

"Now as I said, the way to the Celestial City lies just through this Town where this lusty Fair is kept; and he that would go to the City, and yet not go through this Town, must needs go out of the World. The Prince of princes himself, when here, went through this Town to his own Country, and that upon a Fair-day too. Yea, and as I think, it was Beelzebub, the chief Lord of this Fair, that invited him to buy of his vanities; yea, would have made him Lord of the Fair, would he but have done him reverence as he went through the Town; yea, because he was such a Person of Honour, Beelzebub had him from street to street, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world in a little time, that he might, if possible, allure that blessed One to cheapen and buy some of his vanities: but he had no mind to the merchandise, and therefore left the Town without laying out as much as one farthing upon these vanities. This Fair, therefore, is an ancient thing, of long standing, and a very great Fair.

"Now these Pilgrims, as I said, must needs go through this Fair. Well, so they did; but behold even as they entered into the Fair, all the people in the Fair were moved, and the Town itself, as it were, in a hubbub, about them, and that for several reasons; for,

'First', The Pilgrims were clothed with such kind of raiment as was diverse from the raiment of any that traded in that Fair. The people, therefore, of the Fair, made a great gazing upon them. Some said they were fools; some, they were bedlams; and some, they were outlandish men.

'Secondly', And as they wondered at their apparel, so they did likewise at their speech; for few could understand what they said: they naturally spoke the language of Canaan, but they that kept the Fair were the men of this World; so that, from one end of the Fair to the other, they seemed barbarians each to the other.

'Thirdly', But that which did not a little amuse the merchandisers was, that these Pilgrims set very light by all their wares; they cared not so much as to look upon them; and if they called upon them to buy, they would put their fingers in their ears, and cry, 'Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity'; and look upwards, signifying that their trade and traffic was in Heaven."

Notice Bunyan's three reasons. I believe they are as true and as valid today as they have ever been! The Christian is careful even in the matter of dress and appearance. He is not governed by Vanity Fair, with all its sex appeal so-called, and all its enticements to evil and all the inflaming of the passions. The Christian is careful and modest in dress. And likewise in speech: not only in the things he talks about, but the way in which he talks about them. And thirdly, the Christian is not interested in the vanities and the trinkets that are being sold still in Vanity Fair. He is interested in the merchandise of heaven. His treasure and his heart are in heaven. "But you have not so learned Christ!" Thank God for the gospel of salvation that delivers us from the enticements of Vanity Fair! 

"Authority Over" Comes From "Under Authority" (and others)

“Authority Over” Comes from “Under Authority”

BIBLE MEDITATION:
“And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name.”Philippians 2:8-9

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:
Sometimes we underplay Jesus’ humanity to prove that Jesus was God. But if you think of Jesus masquerading as a man instead of truly being a man, then you’ve missed out on a blessing. You see, it is the humanity of Jesus Christ that teaches us how we are to live as Christians in this world.

And how did He live? He said, “He that sent Me is with Me: the Father hath not left Me alone; for I do always those things that please Him” (John 8:29). He lived in subjection to His Father. And because He chose to submit, God gave Him authority.

ACTION POINT:
Here is the principle to live by: We will never be “over” until we are willing to be “under.” Authority does not develop on its own. It always comes from a higher source of power.

~Adrian Rogers~

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Psalm 138:8

The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.

 

Most manifestly the confidence which the Psalmist here expressed was a divine confidence. He did not say, "I have grace enough to perfect that which concerneth me-my faith is so steady that it will not stagger-my love is so warm that it will never grow cold-my resolution is so firm that nothing can move it; no, his dependence was on the Lord alone. If we indulge in any confidence which is not grounded on the Rock of ages, our confidence is worse than a dream, it will fall upon us, and cover us with its ruins, to our sorrow and confusion. All that Nature spins time will unravel, to the eternal confusion of all who are clothed therein. The Psalmist was wise, he rested upon nothing short of the Lord's work. It is the Lord who has begun the good work within us; it is He who has carried it on; and if he does not finish it, it never will be complete. If there be one stitch in the celestial garment of our righteousness which we are to insert ourselves, then we are lost; but this is our confidence, the Lord who began will perfect. He has done it all, must do it all, and will do it all. Our confidence must not be in what we have done, nor in what we have resolved to do, but entirely in what the Lord will do. Unbelief insinuates- "You will never be able to stand. Look at the evil of your heart, you can never conquer sin; remember the sinful pleasures and temptations of the world that beset you, you will be certainly allured by them and led astray." Ah! yes, we should indeed perish if left to our own strength. If we had alone to navigate our frail vessels over so rough a sea, we might well give up the voyage in despair; but, thanks be to God, He will perfect that which concerneth us, and bring us to the desired haven. We can never be too confident when we confide in Him alone, and never too much concerned to have such a trust.

~Charles Spurgeon~

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Weeping
In 1 Samuel 30:1-4 we read,
Now it happened, when David and his men came to Ziklag, on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the South and Ziklag, attacked Ziklag and burned it with fire, and had taken captive the women and those who were there, from small to great; they did not kill anyone, but carried them away and went their way.  So David and his men came to the city, and there it was, burned with fire; and their wives, their sons, and their daughters had been taken captive.  Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept, until they had no more power to weep.
David experienced the sudden loss of his family and it tore his heart out.  Notice that David and his men lifted up their voices and wept until they had no more power to weep.
Feeling sorrow and anguish and expressing it is not wrong.  In fact, it is normal, especially when you have experienced a sudden and personal loss.
Perhaps, like David, you have lost family members.  Or maybe you have wayward children.  They were brought up in the way of the Lord, but they are living a lifestyle that is diametrically opposed to the ways of God right now, and your heart is broken when you think about it.
Maybe you have experienced some other loss in your life, something of value, something that is important to you, something that has meaning to you.  If so, it is okay to grieve!
God has wired us to be emotional beings.  We are not robots.  It is right for loss to affect us on a personal, emotional level.  As the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3:4, there is a time to weep.
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).
Sorrow has its place and its time, but there is also a time for it to end and to be replaced with something else. 

~Bayless Conley~

What If Calamity Comes?

What If Calamity Comes? by William E. Sangster (1900-1960)

"Yea though I walk through the valley...."
                                                  —Psalm 23:4

NOT everything happens in the world just as God wishes. When people say, "Whatever is, is best," they cannot really mean what they say, or they mean it with certain conditions and reservations which filch the literal meaning from the words. If, in simple truth, "Whatever is, is best," then this is paradise and, as Leibnitz argued, the best of all possible worlds. 

But we find that hard to believe, even when we give the closest heed to the German philosopher's reasoning and allow that "a little bitter is often more pleasing than sugar." Is evil merely a privation, a deficiency, a limitation? the shading of the picture or the discord in the music, just added to heighten and enhance the effect? Can we say with Browning "the evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound"? 

Voltaire makes merry over Leibnitz' reasoning and gives it as his opinion that this is the worst of possible worlds, and while we shrink back from that absurd caricature, we cannot feel that this is "paradise now." Sin seems too positive. Evil leaves its slimy trail over so much that might be fair and beautiful. We pray, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven," because, as yet, the correspondence of earth and heaven is far from complete. 

The writer met a friend one day, a minister, returning from a funeral. Even allowing for the sad errand which had occupied his mind, he seemed peculiarly low-spirited. "I have just buried a child," he said, "and the child's father is under arrest for manslaughter. Last Saturday evening, it seems, he came home drunk, clambered into the bed where his wife and the little one were asleep, and in his fuddled condition pushed the baby out of bed. It fell and, as it fell, the child's head struck the fender. In the gray light of the next morning they found the little body cold and dead upon the floor. The police were called, of course, and the father is in prison awaiting his trial. 

"But that wasn't the whole of it," my friend went on. "After the interment, one of the mourners, trying to make a little pious talk in the parson's presence, said, 'Ah well! It can't be helped, I suppose. It was the will of God.' "The will of God?" said my friend bitterly. "That wasn't the will of God. God could never have wished that that dear child be pushed to death by a drunken brute. It was a horrible travesty of all that God would have wished for the little one." 

As we parted, I turned the old problem over in my mind again. What happens to the guidance of God when calamity comes? Calamity isn't always the outcome of obvious sin. It overtakes the saints. Untimely death has nipped the life of the noblest souls, and not death merely, but death through agonizing pain. Thomas Arnold, the great headmaster, the friend of God and of boyhood, struck down at forty-seven with angina pectoris. F. W. Robertson, fearless thinker and friend of the working man, passed out at thirty-seven with a terrible abscess in the cerebellum. Henry Drummond, whom Ian Maclaren called "the most perfect Christian I have known or expect to see this side of the grave," died at the age of forty-six after two years on his back in pain. Nor is that the problem at its worst. Hardly a year passes but some great disaster stuns the public mind: the Tay Bridge disaster; the ramming of the Victoria-, the loss of the Titanic; the wreck of the R 101. No easy answer leaps to our lips. The man who finds in all such disasters the judgment of God on a wicked people is both un- convincing and inhuman. Choice souls perish in such an hour, and these calamities visit a thrifty and industrious people as well as a profligate and frivolous one. Disaster, like the rain, falls on the just and the unjust. The horror of it strikes one dumb, and when speech returns, a tempest of questions rises to the lips. Does God guide us? Is there knowledge in the Most High? Does he lead us to the lip of a calamity and leave us to fall in? The problem demands an attempt at an answer because any day might thrust it on our notice again and because it challenges faith. If anguish comes, can doubt be far behind? 

It is the opinion of the writer that the perfect will of God is constantly thwarted by human ignorance, stupidity, carelessness, and sin. No other view seems tenable as one looks at this chaotic world. It is a consequence of God's great gift to men of freedom, and without that freedom we should be marionettes and not men. We are born, more- over, into a society and a world where the perfect will of God has been thwarted for ages, and we are bound up in the bundle of life with our fellows. We gain immeasurably by these relationships. We can love one another, serve, help, and influence one another; necessarily we can also harm one another as well. We could not have the blessing without the risk of the bane. God took the risk. Everything sweet in this life has come to us from others. Our mothers suffered pain to give us birth. Our fathers worked for us. When we were ill, doctors and nurses bent their strength and skill to make us better, and our dear ones turned night into day as they watched at our side. Nor were we allowed to grow up untutored in mind or soul. We were educated. All that clever men and women had ever discovered, or thought, was put before us in ways we could take in, and the best the world has ever learned in things spiritual was made attractive too. 

We learned the name of Jesus. The imperishable stories of the Bible were told us, and all along the path of life precious things, the most precious, have come to us from other people. Friendship, counsel, encouragement, love streaming in on us from others because God has set us here in a great family life, and made us so that our lives intertwine. It should not surprise us, in the light of all we gain, that there is some risk of loss as well. When God made us so that we could love and help one another, he exposed his family to the possibility that they would hate and harm one another. Necessarily. The one goes with the other. And sin came in, with its long entail of sorrow and suffering, and we can be hurt at any time by the folly, carelessness, or crime of another. But would you rather live in a world in which that couldn't happen ? Do you wish God had so made us that we could never influence each other, never be friends, never guide, comfort, or help each other . . . never love? It would be a hateful and unendurable existence, loathsome to us all. 

God's will, we believe, for his children, is the perfection of their characters and their ultimate bliss, but the cast of our inherited nature and the conditions of a sin-spoiled world do not allow an easy path to that great end. God therefore permits the woes of life to press upon us; the consequences of our own sin, and sometimes the sin of others; the consequences of our carelessness and ignorance, and the carelessness and ignorance of others. The loss of the Titanic was due to reckless racing through an ice-field, and the death-roll was lengthened by the fact that she only carried boat accommodation for 1,200 people, though the passengers and crew totaled 2,293. It was a compound of pride and criminal folly. But W. T. Stead was among the passengers, going to America in the interests of world peace and to take part in the "Men and Religion Forward Movement." He was drowned. 

Yet God meets us in every situation, hears the cry which our bleeding hearts fling to him, and bears with us when, in bitterness, we question his restraint, deny his love, and doubt his existence. Granted a willing and responsive heart in us, he can so turn tragedy to triumph, and loss to gain, that men have even believed that he sent the pain and devised the disaster, so marvelously does he bring good out of evil. Think how closely joy and pain are interwoven in the fabric of our human lives. Our achievements in love measure our capacity for pain. Before I knew my friend or cared for him, his doings were of no account to me. He could pass me in the street with a frozen stare, I did not mind. He did not sympathize with me in my trouble, and I did not miss his sympathy. When success came to me, he sent no congratulations, but it did not make me grave. We were outside each other's circle and we had no sense of lack. But when I learned to love my friend, I armed him with the power to wound me deeply. I put a weapon in his hand and exposed my heart to its bare point. The more I loved, the more he could wound. If he ignores me now, I am hurt. If he denies his sympathy, I miss it. If he lapses into sin, I share the shame. Love has made me vulnerable, it has exposed me to pain, because pain and love are inextricably interwoven in the only kind of life we know. 

If sin had never spoiled this fair earth ... if men had always done the perfect will of God ... if our poor race had responded at every stage to the leading of the loving Father, . . . anything might have happened then. Perhaps there would have been no need of sympathy in such a world. Perhaps character would have grown without discipline. Perhaps love would never have been linked with pain. Perhaps . . . and perhaps! But in this world, the only world we know, love and pain are interwoven. Mysteriously they belong together. They are united at the very portals of life. There is nothing nobler and sweeter on this planet than mother love, but it is strangely compounded, and half its quality comes from this that a mother goes down to the gates of death for her child. Joy impregnates: pain brings forth: love is born. 

None can deny that the trouble-tossed and pain-racked people have often pioneered the way to a better world: John G. Paton, toiling for Christ be- side the lonely grave of his wife and child in Tanna; Josephine Butler, bereft of her darling girl ; Bishop Chavasse, the saint with a hump-back. Nor is the truth well expressed if we say that they served well in spite of their woe. They served well because of it. They carried it to God, and God turned it into triumph. Many a life has been saved by the loss of the Titanic. The track of west-bound steamers across the Atlantic was shifted further south, away from the dangerous ice-fields. The obsolete Board of Trade requirements, with regard to emergency boat accommodation, were stringently revised. Several improvements in life-saving appliances were immediately made, and wireless, which was still in the immaturity of its use, received the impetus which only tragedy can impart. 

We see the gains in individual lives as well. Commenting on the sorrows that beset Dr. R. W. Dale, Robertson Nicoll says, "In him was fulfilled the great word, that the men of sorrows are the men of influence in every walk of life." Carlyle comments on the sufferings of Dante in these words: "If all had gone well with him, Florence would have had another Lord Mayor and the world would have lost the Divina Commedia." Of our friends, as well as of our Saviour, we might say, "Fruitful let thy sorrows be." And not only of our friends, but of ourselves. 

What, then, shall we say of guidance? If character is God's aim and not our swift enjoyment of some low way of life, should it surprise us that he does not intervene when sin or stupidity, folly or ignorance (our own or another's), brings us to the flinty pathway? Shall we question his love because he persists in treating us as persons and not puppets, and will not rob us of our freedom to save us from our woes? From many of these griefs and pains he could and would have saved us if we had been more sensitive to his leading, and responsive to his call; and it is the whole plea of this book that such guidance is possible, if we will but fulfill the conditions. 

But in a world like ours, where we are close knit in a great family circle and our lives are constantly affected by the deeds of others, it is impossible to think that he could save us from them all, and when we look at our own natures in the light of God, we would hardly desire it ourselves. Disappointment, pain, grief, and loss have taught us so much. Never have we walked the flinty way but we found him on it when we called. Some of the sweetest souls we have known have walked it longer, and in far, far rougher places, but they say : "He never ceased to guide; he knew the way, knew it at its worst. A hand like this hand reached me in the darkness and led me on. Like this hand? Like....and un-like! It was rough with work at a carpenter's bench and pierced with an ancient wound." 

Some are on the path with bitter hearts and lagging feet, and their lives, poor souls, are sour and unlovely. They have not found the Guide or, rather, let the Guide find them. The rebellion in their heart prevents it and the cloud never seems to lift from their toilsome way. Because they do not follow the Guide, they never reach the plains of light. They do not believe that it leads there. It does. Always, to those who will follow the Guide. It is really the path of Opportunity. Guidance does not end when calamity begins. In every situation he meets us and out of every situation he can lead us to a greener pasture and a sphere of wider use. We can trust Him in whom we have believed. 

But when calamity has us in its grip, even this strong thought is not enough of itself. We look the ugly intruder in the face, feel its power to steal the joy from half our life, and cast our querulous inquiries at God, demanding to know why it had to be. In that hour the safeguarding of our freedom doesn't seem enough. In our bewilderment we feel that a loving God would find effective discipline some easier way. We look at him through mists of tears and wonder if, in his greatness, he really feels our woe. Then it is that our Lord comes and shows us his feet, his hands, his side, and if there were a tongue in every wound of Jesus, we know what it would say: "I have suffered!" Then it is that we feel with 'Emerson how nigh is grandeur to our dust, how near is God to man. He has suffered. He does not simply reign in some far-off splendor, untroubled by our woe. 

"Jesus knows all about our struggles. 
He will guide till the day is done." 

The whole story of the Passion is rich in its power to bless. We go with Him into Gethsemane and feel, even when our own sorrow is most vivid to our thought, that we have not drunk the cup of bitterness so deep as this. In all the dark mystery of it, the shadows seem never so dark as they do in Gethsemane. The word "agony" is used of our Lord only in the Garden. He was master of himself from the kiss of Judas till he cried with a loud voice and gave up his spirit. But in the garden....agony...the bloody sweat...the pleading prayer. "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." So he prays, "first on his feet: and then on his knees: and then on his face." He knows it all: deeper, further than any of us. Beside his agony, our own seems to shrink. "And every cross grows light beneath the shadow, Lord, of thine." 

Then the voices through the trees and the gleaming lanterns. Judas and his leprous kiss. Poor Peter dragging the sword from beneath his garment and taking a blow at the nearest. He meant it for his head but it only got his ear. The shouts, the trampled undergrowth, the scared disciples, and the inquisitive mob. 

But Jesus is master of the situation again. His will is perfectly attuned with the Father's. He is going right on by way of the cross. Turning on Peter, he ordered the sword back into its sheath and broke their last hopes of spectacular conquest. He would not appeal to force. "Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?" But he would not call them. He was taking the long way, but the only possible way, the way of love, and no pain would turn him back. Never had his Father broken the rule of the ages and bludgeoned his way into the unwilling hearts of men. Jesus would not ask him to do it now. There was no discord in these wills so perfectly attuned. He would conquer sin with love. He would make the cross a throne. He would use the shame and pain and humiliation of it to expose the very heart of God, and sin would not triumph : it would be but a dark background revealing, by contrast, the wonder of that love. So he takes the cross, not of compulsion, not by mere submission or resignation, but willingly. 

And when we see him there, we have our greatest aid to understanding how the calamities of life can be wrested to our soul's use, and the use of others. He takes it willingly. His arms are not merely stretched upon it: they are wound around it. He holds it to him. He does not merely suffer it, he employs it. And so the symbol of shame becomes the focus point of glory. 

In that same willing spirit he desires that we meet, and use, the calamities of life that overtake us. An evil that can be put right must be resisted. The call of a situation that can be corrected is not easy acquiescence but spirited opposition. But those are not the problems we are considering now. There is a finality about bereavement, an amputated limb, an incurable disease, a lost fortune. The real crosses of life have to be borne. Can you bear the cross willingly? That will change it from a weight into wings: it cannot crush you: you rise by it. 

"So by my woes to be Nearer, my God, to thee, 
Nearer to thee!" 

Through the shadows he guides still and converts the loss into gain, working out of our folly and mistakes something which will be worthy of the price pain has paid. 

Thomas Erskine of Linlathen says: 

Many things appear, and are irretrievable to us, but there is nothing irretrievable with God. This is a great gospel to my heart. He, who knows how to take occasion from the fall to bring in the redemption, may be safely trusted with each event, and with every action, good and bad. I believe that love reigns and that love will prevail. I believe that he says to me every morning, "Begin again thy journey and thy life; thy sins, which are many, are not only forgiven, but they shall be made, by the wisdom of God, the basis on which he will build blessings." 

So we believe. They shall be made, by the wisdom of God, the basis on which he will build blessings. Our sins and our mistakes! Even the saddest of our mistakes : the ones we made when we listened for his guiding voice but did not quite succeed in disentangling it from the voice of self-love. He will build a blessing on it, and in the light of heaven the mysteries will be solved, the gains of our losses made clear, and fullest scope be found for the disciplined abilities we have developed on earth. 

"Then shall I see and hear and know 
All I desired and wished below, 
And every power find sweet employ 
In that eternal world of joy."