A MONTHLY READING OF

INSIGHTS FROM RENOWNED CHRISTIANS

NOVEMBER

Day 1

THE "ALMOST CHRISTIAN"

GEORGE WHITEFIELD

An almost Christian, if we consider him in respect to his duty to God, is one that wavers between Christ and the world. It is true that he has an inclination to religion, but he is very cautious that he does not go too far in it. He prays indeed that “God’s will may be done on earth as it is in heaven,” but all the same, he is very partial in his obedience. He is one that depends much on outward ordinances, and so looks upon himself as righteous. He is fond of the form, but never experiences the power of godliness in his heart.

If you consider him in respect to his neighbor, he is one that is strictly just to all, but then this does not proceed from any love to God or regard to man, but from a principle of self-love. He knows dishonesty will spoil his reputation and hinder his thriving in the world. He is one that depends much upon being negatively good, and is content with the consciousness of having done no one any harm.

The almost Christian is no enemy to charitable contributions in public, if not too frequently asked. But then he is unacquainted with the kind offices of visiting the sick and imprisoned, clothing the naked, and relieving the hungry in a private manner. He thinks these things belong only to the clergy, though his own false heart tells him that nothing but pride keeps him from exercising these acts of humility. He is guided more by the world, than by the Word of God. He cannot believe the way to heaven is as narrow as some would make it.

Thus lives the almost Christian. Not that I can say I have fully described him to you, but if your consciences have done their proper work and made a particular application to your own hearts, I cannot but fear that some of you will see some resemblance to yourself.

Why are so many no more than almost Christian? The first reason is because they start out with false notions of what religion is. Though they live in a Christian country, yet they do not know what Christianity is. Some think religion is merely belonging to this or that church, or being moral. Most think religion is a round of duties. Very few acknowledge it to be what it really is--a thorough inward change of nature, a divine life, a union of the soul with God.

A second reason why so many are no more than almost Christian is a servile fear of man. Multitudes awakened to a sense of the divine life have, from a base fear of being counted singular, suffered all those good impressions to wear off. It is true that they have some esteem for Jesus Christ, but then, like Nicodemus, they would come to him only by night. They are willing to serve him, but then they would do it secretly. They fear being laughed at and ridiculed. No wonder so many are no more than almost Christian, since so many “love the praise of men more than the honor which comes of God.”

The love of pleasure is a reason why so many are no more than almost Christian. Our blessed Lord has said, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself.” Tell them the necessity of mortifying sensual pleasures, and it is as difficult for them to hear as if you were to bid them cut off their hand. They cannot think our blessed Lord requires so much. The Apostle Paul himself, even after he had converted thousands and was near the end of his life, professed that it was his daily practice to discipline his body and bring it into subjection, lest after he had preached to others, he himself should be a castaway.

We now consider the folly of being no more than an almost Christian: such folly is ineffectual to salvation. God requires us “to love him with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our strength.” Many may play the hypocrite, but God at the great day will strike them dead for having pretended to offer him all their heart, when they kept back from Him the greatest part. An almost Christian is one of the most hurtful creatures in the world; he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is one of those false prophets who would persuade men that the way to heaven is broader than it really is. He is a greater enemy to the Cross of Christ than even an infidel, for an almost Christian, through his subtle hypocrisy, draws away many after him. Therefore he must expect to receive the greater damnation.

An almost Christian exhibits the greatest instance of ingratitude toward our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. Christ came down from heaven and shed his precious blood to purchase these hearts of ours, and shall we only give Him half of them? How can we say we love him when our hearts are not wholly His? We have been redeemed from infinite, unavoidable misery and punishment by the death of Jesus Christ, and yet will we not give ourselves wholly to Him?

tracts.ukgo.com/almost_christian.doc

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Day 2

GOD JUSTIFIES THE UNGODLY

CHARLES SPURGEON

This message is for you. You will find the text in the Epistle to the Romans, the fourth chapter and the fifth verse: "To him that works not but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness."

Are you not surprised that there should be such an expression as this in the Bible, "Who justifies the ungodly?" Those men who hate the doctrines of the cross bring it as a charge against God that He saves wicked men and receives to Himself the vilest of the vile. But see how this Scripture accepts the charge, and plainly states it! By the mouth of His servant Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, God takes to Himself the title of "Him who justifies the ungodly." He makes those just who are unjust, forgives those who deserve to be punished, and favors those who deserve no favor. You thought, did you not, that salvation was for the good and that God's grace was for the pure and holy who are free from sin. It has entered your mind that, if you were excellent, then God would reward you. You have thought that because you are not worthy, there could be no way of your enjoying His favor. You must be somewhat surprised to read a text like this, "Who justifies the ungodly." We, according to the natural legality of our hearts, are always talking about our own goodness and our own worthiness, and we stubbornly hold that there must be something in us to win the notice of God. Now, God, who sees through all deceptions, knows that there is no goodness whatever in us. "There is none righteous, no not one."

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Now, while this is very surprising, I want you to notice how it makes the gospel available to you and to me. If God justifies the ungodly, then, dear friend, He can justify you, for are you not that very kind of person? If you are unconverted at this moment, it is a very proper description of you. You have lived without God, you have been the reverse of godly. In one word, you have been and are ungodly. Perhaps you have not even attended a place of worship on Sunday, but have lived in disregard of God's day, house, and Word. This proves you to have been ungodly. Sadder still, it may be that you have even tried to doubt God's existence, and have gone so far as to say that you did. You have lived on this fair earth, which is full of the tokens of God's presence, and all the while you have shut your eyes to the clear evidences of His power and Godhead. Possibly you have lived a great many years this way, so that you are now pretty well settled in your ways. If you were labeled ungodly, it would describe you in the same way as the sea is labeled salt water, would it not?

Possibly you are a person of another sort. You have regularly attended to all the outward forms of religion, but you have had no heart in them. Though meeting with the people of God, you have never met with God himself. You have been in the choir and yet not praised the Lord with your heart. You have lived without any love to God in your heart or regard to his commands. Well, you are just the kind of man to whom this gospel is sent--this gospel which says that God justifies the ungodly. It is happily available for you. It suits you perfectly, does it not? How I wish that you would accept it! If you are a sensible man, you will see the remarkable grace of God in providing for such men as you, and you will say to yourself, "Justify the ungodly! Why then should I not be justified, and justified at once?"

If there is a physician who has discovered a sure and precious remedy, to whom is that physician sent? To those who are perfectly healthy? I think not. Put him down in a district where there are no sick persons, and he feels that he is not in his place. There is nothing for him to do. "The whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick." Is it not equally clear that the great remedies of grace and redemption are for the sick in soul? If you, dear friend, feel that you are spiritually sick, the Physician has come into the world for you. Jesus seeks and saves those who are lost.

Do not attempt to touch yourself up and make yourself something other than you really are, but come as you are to Him who justifies the ungodly. The gospel will receive you into its halls if you come as a sinner, not otherwise. Wait not for reformation, but come at once for salvation. God justifies the ungodly, and that means you as you now are; it meets you in your worst estate. Come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. Come to Jesus just as you are: leprous, filthy, naked, neither fit to live nor fit to die. Come, though you hardly dare to hope for anything but death. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon you like a horrible nightmare. Come and ask the Lord to justify another ungodly one. Why should He not? Come, for this great mercy of God is meant for such as you are.

I put it in the language of the text, and I cannot put it more strongly. The Lord God Himself takes to Himself this gracious title, "Him who justifies the ungodly." Those who by nature are ungodly, He makes just and causes to be treated as just. Is not this a wonderful word for you?

All of Grace

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Day 3

JAEL AND SISERA

WILLIAM M. THOMSON

"And they reported to Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor. So Sisera gathered together all his chariots . . . and all the people who were with him, from Harosheth Hagoyim to the River Kishon . . . Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him. And the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army with the edge of the sword before Barak; and Sisera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot . . . to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite; for there was peace between Jabin king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. And Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, 'Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me; do not fear' . . . Then Jael took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, and it went down into the ground; for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died." Judges 4:12-21

Sisera and all his chariots, even nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people that were with him were encamped on the plain. Barak, accompanied by the heroic Deborah, with ten thousand courageous men of Naphtali and Zebulun from Kedesh, occupied Mount Tabor. On the morning of that eventful day, probably long before it was light, Deborah set the army in motion with the energetic command and animating promise, "Up! For this is the day in which the LORD has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the LORD gone out before you?" Rapidly they descended the mountain and crossed over below Nain into the valley of Jezreel, inclining to the left to avoid the low and marshy ground, and by the first faint light of morning were upon the sleeping host of the Canaanites.

This assault, wholly unexpected, threw the Canaanites into instant and irrecoverable confusion. Only half awake, they fled in dismay down the plain, hotly pursued by the victorious Barak. God also fought against them: "They fought from the heavens; the stars from their courses fought against Sisera." Josephus adds that a storm from the east beat furiously in the faces of the Canaanites, but only on the backs of the Jews. It was certainly this storm which swelled the Kishon. The army of Sisera naturally sought to regain the strongly fortified Harosheth of the Gentiles, from which they had marched to their camping ground a short time before. The narrative of the battle leads us to seek it somewhere down the Kishon, for only in that direction would they flee from an attack coming from the northeast. It was probably at the lower end of the narrow pass through which the Kishon flows out of Esdraelon into the plain of Acre.

The victorious Barak is behind them. On their left are the hills of Samaria, in the hand of their enemies. On their right is the swollen river and marshes of eth Thorah. The only alternative is to make for the narrow pass which leads from Esdraelon to Harosheth, a part of the plain perfectly level but extremely muddy during the wet season. Between the hills of Samaria and those of Galilee on the opposite side is a vale for the Kishon, which becomes more and more narrow until within the pass it is only a few rods wide. And there the horses, chariots, and men become mixed in horrible confusion, jostling and treading down one another. Swifter and deeper than above, the Kishon zigzags until it reaches the perpendicular base of Carmel. There is no longer any possibility of avoiding it. Rank upon rank, the fleeing Canaanites plunge madly in, those behind crushing those in front. Then we read, "the torrent of Kishon swept them away."

It is recorded that "Sisera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot." How did it come to pass that Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, is found so near the battlefield that Sisera could flee to her tent? We are told in the narrative that their home was near Kedesh, two days' travel to the northeast.

An incident that happened to me may explain why Heber was found upon this plain at the time of the battle. With a guide from Nazareth, I once crossed the lower part of Esdraelon in the winter. It was then full of Arab tents. Their home was in the mountains north of Nazareth, but they came down to pass the cold months of winter below. This was the very thing, I suppose, that Heber and his tribe of Kenites did in the days of Jael. The text mentions that Heber the Kenite, who was of the children of Hobab, had severed himself from the Kenites and pitched his tent on the plain of Zaanaim, which is by Kedesh. Heber probably migrated to that distant region for the simple reason that it was under the government of his ally Jabin. We need by no means take for granted, however, that because the Kenites were not at war with the tyrannical Jabin, that therefore they were treated with justice. It may have been from fear and the inability to protect themselves, or because they could not throw off the galling yoke, that they were at peace. It is nearly certain that in those lawless times the defenseless Kenites would be oppressed by Jabin and would gladly embrace any opportunity to escape his intolerable bondage. Their deliverer, therefore, would be esteemed a patriot and hero, not a murderer.

Even if it be supposed that Jabin was a kind friend and just protector of the Kenites, it still does not follow that Jael might not have had special reason to fear and hate Sisera himself. He had command of the immediate neighborhood where the Kenites were encamped, and, unless he differed from modern commanders of Eastern armies, he would most certainly abuse them or allow them to be insulted by those in his command. Jael might have thus been injured in the highest degree, if not by Sisera, by some of his lewd captains. Or there may have been a recent blood feud between their tribe and he or his family. This would not only justify Jael according to the law of retribution, but render it obligatory upon her and every one of the tribe to take revenge upon their common enemy, as is done even to this day among the Druses and Bedawin Arabs.

It may be assumed as nearly certain that Jael would not have ventured upon this daring act unless she knew that her husband and her whole tribe would not only justify but rejoice in it as a righteous retribution upon their oppressor, and as the means of escape from an intolerable bondage against which they were watching for an opportunity to revolt. Even on the nearly incredible supposition that neither the Kenites nor Jael herself had any cause of complaint against Sisera, we still may fairly conclude that they were believers in Israel's God, and friends of his people. Their whole history confirms this. Therefore, they must have been deeply grieved at the cruel oppression which their brethren suffered from Sisera.

The reason why it is mentioned that the Kenites were neutral in this war was not to give the idea that they were under any obligation to take sides with Sisera, or to protect him if defeated. It was necessary simply in order to account for the Kenites being down on Esdraelon when the army of Sisera was there. It deserves to be remembered that if the Kenites had attempted to shield and aid Sisera after his defeat, they would have rendered themselves partisans in the war on the losing side, and might have been treated as enemies by the now victorious Israelites.

On the whole, I conclude that if all the circumstances and influences which impelled Jael to the daring act and sustained her in it were known, we should find that she violated neither the customs of her people and laws of war then in force, nor the abstract and greater laws of righteousness, by thus destroying the enemy of God's people and the oppressor of her own, who from necessity sought in her tent an asylum to which he had no right. Under these impressions, I can join with Deborah in celebrating Jael and her deed.

The Land and The Book, Vol. 11

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Day 4

LUKEWARM CHRISTIANS

SAMUEL DAVIES

"I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth." Rev. 3:15,16

My present design is to expose the absurdity and wickedness of lukewarmness or indifference in reli­gion, a disease that has spread its deadly contagion far and wide and calls for a speedy cure. If there be a God (as religion teaches), then he is the most glorious and lovely Being. Nothing can be so important to us as his favor, and nothing so terrible as his displeasure. If he be our Maker, Benefactor, and Judge, then it must be our greatest concern to serve him with all our might. If Jesus Christ be such a Saviour as our religion represents and we profess to believe, then he demands our warmest love and most lively service. If eternity, heaven and hell, and the final judgment are awful realities, then the most weighty concerns of the present life are but trifles in comparison. If prayer and other religious exercises are our duty, then certainly they require all the vigor of our souls. Nothing can be more absurd or incongruous than to per­form them in a languid, spiritless manner.

Consider who and what God is. He is the original uncreated beauty, the sum total of all natural and moral perfections, the origin of all the excellencies that are scattered throughout this glorious universe. He sustains the most majestic and endearing relations to us--our Father, our Preserver and Benefactor, our Lawgiver and our Judge. And is such a Being to be put off with heartless, lukewarm services? What can be more absurd or impi­ous than to dishonor this supreme excellency with a languid love and esteem; to trifle in the presence of the most venerable Majesty; to treat the best of Beings with in­difference; to be careless about our duty to such a Father; to return such a Benefactor only insipid complimentary ex­pressions of gratitude; to be dull and spiritless in obedience to such a lawgiver; and to be indifferent about the favor or displeasure of such a Judge! I appeal to heaven and earth to attest if this be not the most shocking conduct imaginable. Does not your reason pronounce it horrid and most dar­ingly wicked? And yet thus is the great and blessed God treated by mankind in general. It is most astonish­ing that God should bear with such treatment so long.

Are there not some lukewarm Laodi­ceans in this assembly? Jesus knows your works, that you are neither cold nor hot; and it is fit that you also should know them. Are you not convinced, upon a little inquiry, that your hearts are habitually indifferent toward God? You may indeed entertain a speculative esteem or a good opinion of him, but are your souls alive toward him? Do they burn with his love? Are you fervent in spirit when you are serving him? Is lukewarmness a suitable return for that love which brought Christ down from his native paradise into our wretched world, kept his mind for thirty-three painful and tedious years intent upon the salvation of sinners, ren­dered him cheerfully patient of the shame, curse, and tortures of crucifixion? Is it a suitable return for that love which makes him the sinner’s friend still in the courts of heaven, where he appears as our prevailing Advocate and Intercessor?

My fellow-sinners, you who are the objects of all this love, can you put him off with languid devotions and faint services? If so, then every grateful and generous passion is extinct in your souls. Was Christ indifferent about your salvation? Was his love lukewarm toward you? No. Your salvation was the ob­ject of his most intense application night and day through the whole course of his life, and it lay nearest his heart in the agonies of death. His love! what shall I say of it? What language can describe its strength and ardor? Never was a father more anxious to rescue an only son from the hands of a murderer, or to pluck him out of the fire, than Jesus was to save perishing sinners. Do you not expect everlast­ing happiness from him, purchased at the expense of his own blood? And can you hope for such an immense blessing without feeling yourselves most sensibly obliged to him? Can you hope he will do so much for you, yet be content to do nothing for him or hurry through his service with lukewarmness and languor? Can anything be more absurd or impious than this? If this be your habitual temper, then you may expect he will reject you with the most nauseating disgust and abhorrence.

View a luke­warm professor in prayer. He pays to an omniscient God the compliment of a bended knee, yet in addressing the Supreme Majesty of heaven and earth, he hardly recollects in whose presence he is or to whom he is speaking. It were as if he were worshiping without an object, pouring out empty words into the air. Perhaps through the entire prayer he had not one solemn, affecting thought of that God whose name he so often invoked. Here is a needy, famishing beggar pleading for such immense blessings as everlasting salvation and the joys of heaven, yet so lukewarmly and thoughtlessly that one would think he did not care whether his requests were granted or not. He is an obnoxious offender confessing his sins with a heart untouched with sorrow, worshiping the living God with a dead heart, making great requests which are forgotten as soon as he rises from his knees. Can there be a more shocking, impious, and daring conduct than this? For a criminal to catch flies or play with a feather when pleading with his judge for his pardon would be but a faint shadow of such religious trifling. Such prayers are an abomination to the Lord.

We shall now consider the Word of God. You believe it to be divine, you profess it the standard of your religion and the most excellent book in the world. It is God that speaks to you; it is God that sends you a letter when you are reading or hearing his word. How impious and provok­ing, then, must it be to neglect it and let it lie by you as an antiquated, useless book. How impious must it be to read it in a careless, super­ficial manner and hear it with an inattentive, wandering mind? How would you like it if, when you spoke to your servant about his own interest, he should turn away and ignore you? Would you like it if you wrote a letter to your son and he did not carefully read it or labor to understand it? But do not some of you treat the sacred oracles in this manner? One would think you would be all attention and would reverence every word, drink it in, feel its energy, and acquire the character of that happy man to whom the God of heaven condescends to look upon.

Consider how earnest and active men are in other pursuits--full of energy, fire, and hurry. What labor and toil! What schemes and contrivances! What solicitude about success! What fears of disappointment! Hands, heads, hearts, all busy. And all this to procure those enjoyments which at best they cannot long retain and which, the next hour, may be torn from them. What hardships are undergone, dangers confronted, rivers of blood shed to acquire a name or obtain riches and honors! On sea and land, at home and abroad, you will find men eagerly pursuing some temporal good. Here men act like themselves; they show they are alive and en­dowed with powers of great activity. And shall they be zealous and laborious in the pursuit of earthly vanities but quite indifferent and sluggish in the infinitely more important concerns of eternity? Solicitous about a mortal body but careless about an immortal soul!

If you are possessed with this Lao­dicean spirit, I beseech you, indulge it no longer. It mars all your religion and will end in your eternal ruin. Let the best of us lament our lukewarm­ness and earnestly seek more fervor of spirit. You know where to apply. Christ is your life, so cry to him for the communication of it. “Lord Jesus! A little more life, a little more vital heat to this languishing soul, I pray.”

Sermons on Important Subjects, Vol. 1

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Day 5

THE FALL OF MAN

JOHN MURRAY

Man was created upright and therefore with the character that constituted him for, and endowed him with the ability to perform, righteousness. Such a position is demanded by the fact that he was very good and was created in the divine image. If he was very good, he was such in terms of the categories that define his nature as man, and if he bore the divine image, he must have borne it in the fullest terms of the Scripture definition. At the suggestion of Satan, man disobeyed and fell into sin and under its guilt.

Satan tempted man to sin; this temptation was the occasion of man's fall. It was not, however, the cause. No external power or influence can cause a rational being to sin. The sin of Adam was a movement of defection and apostasy and transgression in Adam's heart and mind and will, and for that movement he was responsible and he alone was the agent and subject. The temptation of Satan did not constitute the sin of Adam. It was the voluntary acquiescence in that suggestion, the embrace or sympathetic entertainment of it. For that acquiescence man was solely and wholly responsible. Satan was responsible for the malicious and seductive intent of the temptation, and for its character as seduction. Satan incurred guilt thereby. But for the fall of Adam, Adam alone was responsible.

God gave to man the power of contrary choice*. Man of his own will, by no external compulsion or determination, used that power in the commission of sin. There was no necessity arising from his physical condition, nor from his moral nature, nor from the nature of his environment, why he should sin. It was a free movement within man's spirit. To use Laidlaw's words, "It arose with an external suggestion, and upon an external occasion, but it was an inward crisis."

The outward act of transgression, like all overt acts, was determined by inclination, propension, character. Since the character that produced the act cannot be different as to its moral character from the act itself, we must conclude that the inclination, disposition or character of Adam changed from holiness to unholiness. It was that change of moral character that alone can explain the overt act of Sin. The inward change was signalized or manifested by the overt act of disobedience.

This analysis can be shown on exegetical and psychological grounds. The overt act must be traced to its source in the movement of defection in man's heart and mind. And that movement of defection consisted in doubt of the divine goodness, wisdom and love, disbelief of the divine Word, coveting of the divine prerogatives. This movement of doubt, unbelief and lust issued in direct disobedience to the divine command. "The woman saw...that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, and she took." In Shedd's words, "Eve looked upon the tree of knowledge not only with innocent but with sinful desire. She not only had the natural created desire for it as producing nourishing food, and as a beautiful object to the eye, but she came to have, besides this, the unnatural and self-originated desire for it as yielding a kind of knowledge which God forbade man to have. She lusted after that knowledge of good and evil which eating of the fruit would impart....This lusting of Eve for a knowledge that God had prohibited was her apostasy."

In reference to I Timothy 2:14, Shedd says, "According to St. Paul, Adam was seduced by his affection for Eve, rather than deceived by the lie of Satan. He fell with his eyes wide open to the fact that if he ate he would die."

The fall, then, was complete moral revolt against the sovereignty, supremacy, authority and will of God. In the command given to Adam there was epitomized the sovereignty, authority, wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth of God. Disobedience to it was an assault upon the divine Majesty, repudiation of his sovereignty and authority, doubt of his goodness, dispute with his wisdom, contradiction of his veracity. Sin is transgression of law, and law is the expression of all that God is in the moral sphere in relation to man, as absolute and sovereign Creator and Ruler and righteous Judge. Sin is all along the line of divine perfection a contradiction of each.

In ethics the ultimate question is, "What has God commanded?" It is not, "What is the most expedient, or according to the nature of things, the good or the best?" The ultimate test of our loyalty is preparedness to obey simply and solely because God has commanded. When man fails here, it intimates the bankruptcy of moral character.

________

*Contrary choice is the ability to choose between alternatives that are morally antithetical, between good and bad regarded not relatively but absolutely in terms of God's judgment. Alternative choice, on the other hand, is the choice between alternatives that are ethically of the same character, alternatives that are both good or both bad.

Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol. Two

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Day 6

THE PERSON OF CHRIST:
DEATH, RESURRECTION, ASCENSION

RALPH EARLE

It was the world's blackest hour. It was the world's brightest hour. This is the paradox of the cross. It was the blackest hour because human hate came to its fiercest focus. It was the brightest hour because divine love came to its fullest flower. There, hate was seen in all its heinous horror. But there also, love revealed the heart of God.

Calvary stands at the crossroads of human history. All the divine paths of the past led to it. All the divine paths of the present and future lead from it. At the cross, all the sin of the ages was placed on the heart of the sinless Son of God, as he became the racial representative of all humanity. From the cross, salvation flows to every believing soul. This is the Gospel, the greatest good news the world has ever heard.

The death of Jesus differed from that of every other man. He "dismissed his spirit." His was a completely voluntary decease: "No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself." Death was not forced upon him. He accepted it as the will of God for the salvation of man. What did Jesus' death mean for him? The answer is best suggested by his prayer in Gethsemane. There he cried out in agony of soul, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Then, he bowed his head in humble submission and said, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt."

What was this cup from which he prayed to be delivered? Carping critics have said that Jesus cringed with cowardly fear at the thought of death. But such cavilers are utterly ignorant of the true significance of that hour. Jesus was not afraid to die! It was his Father's face turned away from him in the awful hour from which he shrank in anguish of spirit. Our substitute took the torturous trail of a lost soul, walking out into the labyrinthine depths of outer darkness. He tasted death for every man. That means more than physical death. He was paying the penalty for sin--not his, but ours. The penalty for sin is separation from God. This was the price that Jesus had to pay for our salvation. He who could say "I do always those things that please him," had to endure the displeasure of the one he delighted to serve.

In those few but fateful hours on the cross, Jesus tasted the unspeakable horror of eternal death. Olin Curtis has well expressed it thus: "And so, there alone, our Lord opens his mind, his heart, his personal consciousness to the whole inflow of the horror of sin--the endless history of it, from the first choice of selfishness on to the eternity of hell; the boundless ocean and desolation he allows, wave upon wave, to overwhelm his soul." This terrific cost reveals God's moral concern for sin. His holiness forbade him to treat it lightly. That he would forsake his Son shows the ethical intensity of the redemptive deed.

What does Jesus' death mean to us? First, it means that a guilty sinner has access to a holy God. This was symbolized by the fact that at Jesus' death the inner veil, which closed off the Holy of Holies, was torn in two. Second, it means the forgiveness of sins. The essential thing in forgiveness is the separation of the sinner from his sin. This required Calvary. Third, it involves the crucifixion of self. His crucifixion must become our crucifixion. What was potential and provisional at Calvary must become actual and experimental in our own lives.

Without the resurrection, the crucifixion would have been in vain. Brunner asserts: "On the resurrection everything else depends." It was the resurrection that validated the atoning death of Jesus and gave it value. It proved that his sacrifice for sins had been accepted. The whole redemptive scheme would have fallen apart without it. For by his resurrection, Jesus Christ became the first fruits of a new race, a new humanity.

The resurrection holds a more prominent place in the New Testament as a whole than in modern preaching, even that of evangelicals. Alan Richardson asserts: "Every book in the New Testament declares or assumes that Christ rose from the dead." One striking feature of early apostolic preaching is the emphasis not only on Christ's rising from the dead, but on the fact that God raised him. The resurrection was a divine act. It is the keystone of the Christian faith. Without it, we have no salvation from sin and no hope of our own resurrection.

Actual descriptions of the ascension are very limited in number and scope. Only two specific passages can be cited, both written by Luke. But as Floyd Filson notes, "...eleven New Testament books, by at least seven different writers, refer clearly to this Exaltation. It obviously was a constant feature of early Christian preaching and teaching."

It should be noted in this connection that the resurrection and ascension are very closely united in the apostolic kerygma [proclamation]. Together they constitute the exaltation of the crucified Christ. The significance of the ascension is clear. It means that Jesus Christ was exalted to the right hand of the Father, there to receive his proper place as Sovereign Lord. But it also suggests that he carried his humanity with him back to heaven. This idea is emphasized in Hebrews where it is stated that since he shared our human experiences, he is able to be a merciful and faithful High Priest.

The death, resurrection, ascension--these were epochal events in human history. But have they become epoch-making experiences in our individual lives? Do we know Christ in the forgiveness of our sins, in identification with him on the cross, in the crucifixion of self? Do we know him in the power of his resurrection? Have we accepted him as Sovereign Lord of our lives?

Basic Christian Doctrines (edited by Carl F. H. Henry)

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Day 7

THE FIG TREE GENERATION

F. F. BRUCE

"Truly I say to you,
this generation will not pass away before all these things take place."
(Mark 13:30)

This has been regarded as a hard saying by those who take it to refer to Christ's second advent, his coming in glory. If Jesus really affirmed that this event would take place within a generation from the time of speaking (which was only a few days before his arrest and execution), then, it is felt, he was mistaken, and this is for many an unacceptable conclusion.

Some students of the New Testament who do not concede that Jesus might have been mistaken are nevertheless convinced that the reference is indeed to his glorious advent. If 'all these things' must denote the events leading up to the advent and the advent itself, then some other interpretation, they say, will have to be placed on 'this generation'. Other meanings which the Greek noun genea (here translated 'generation') bears in certain contexts are canvassed. The word is sometimes used in the sense of 'race', so perhaps, it is suggested, the point is that the Jewish race, or even the human race, will not pass away before the second advent. Plainly the idea that the human race is meant cannot be entertained; every description of that event implies that human beings will be around to witness it, for otherwise it would have no context to give it any significance. Nor is there much more to be said for the idea that the Jewish race is meant. There is no hint anywhere in the New Testament that the Jewish race will cease to exist before the end of the world. In any case, what point would there be in such a vague prediction? It would be as much as to say, 'At some time in the indefinite future all these things will take place.'

'This generation' is a recurring phrase in the Bible, and each time it is used it bears the ordinary sense of the people belonging, as we say, to one fairly comprehensive age-group. One desperate attempt to combine the recognition of this fact with a reference to the second advent in the text and yet exonerate Jesus from being mistaken in his forecast, is to take 'this generation' to mean not 'this generation now alive' but 'the generation which will be alive at the time about which I am speaking'. The meaning would then be, 'The generation on earth when these things begin to take place will still be on earth when they are all completed; all these things will take place within the span of one generation.'

Is this at all probable? I think not. When we are faced with the problem of understanding a hard saying, it is always a safe procedure to ask, "What would it have meant to the people who first heard it?" And there can be but one answer to this question. Jesus' hearers could have understood him to mean only that 'all these things' would take place within their generation. Not only does 'generation' in the phrase 'this generation' always mean the people alive at one particular time, the phrase itself always means 'the generation now living.'

But what are 'all these things' which are due to take place before 'this generation' passes away? Jesus was speaking in response to a question put to him by four of his disciples. They were visiting Jerusalem for the Passover, and the disciples were impressed by the architectural grandeur of the temple, so recently restored and enlarged by Herod. "Look, Teacher," said one of them, "what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!" Jesus replied, "Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down." This aroused their curiosity and, seizing an opportunity when they were with him on the Mount of Olives, looking across to the temple area, four of them asked, "Tell us, when will this be? And what will be the sign when all these things are to be accomplished?" (Mark 13:1-4).

In the disciples' question, 'all these things' are the destruction of the temple and attendant events. It seems reasonable to regard the hard saying as summing up the answer to their question. If so, then 'all these things' will have the same meaning in question and answer. The hard saying will then mean, 'this generation will not pass away before' the temple is totally destroyed. It is well known that the temple was actually destroyed by the Romans under the crown prince Titus in August of A.D. 70, not more than forty years after Jesus spoke.

But if that is what the saying means, why should it have been thought to predict the last advent within that generation? Because, in the discourse which intervenes between verse 4 and verse 30 of Mark 13, other subject-matter is interwoven with the forecast of the time of trouble leading up to the disaster of A.D. 70. In particular, there is the prediction of 'the Son of man coming in clouds with power and great glory' and sending out his angels to 'gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven' (vss. 26-27). Some interpreters have taken this to be a highly figurative description of the divine judgment which many Christians, and not only Christians, saw enacted in the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem; but it is difficult to agree with them.

Mark probably wrote his Gospel four or five years before A.D. 70. When he wrote, the fall of the temple and the coming of the Son of man lay alike in the future, and he had no means of knowing whether or not there would be a substantial lapse of time between these two events. Even so, he preserves in the same context another saying of Jesus relating to the time of a future event: "But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." But what is the day or hour to which it refers? Certainly not the day or hour of the destruction of the temple: what the whole context emphasizes about that event is its nearness and certainty. The event whose timing is known to none but the Father cannot be anything other than the coming of the Son of man described in verse 26.

Luke, as he reproduces the substance of the discourse of Mark 13:5-30, lays more emphasis on the fate of Jerusalem, the city as well as the temple: "Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" (Luke 21:24). Matthew, writing his Gospel probably a short time after the destruction of the temple, could see, as Mark naturally could not, the separation in time between that event and the coming of the Son of man. For Matthew, the one event had taken place while the other was still future. He rewords the disciples' question to Jesus so that it refers to both events distinctly and explicitly. Jesus, as in Mark, foretells how not one stone of the temple will be left standing on another, and the disciples say, "Tell us, (a) when will these things be, and (b) what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age? (Matt. 24:3). Then, at the end of the following discourse, Jesus answers their twofold question by saying that (a) "this generation will not pass away till all these things take place" (Matt. 24:34) while, (b) with regard to his coming and 'the close of the age', he tells them that 'of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only" (Matt. 24:36). The distinction between the two predictions is clear in Matthew, for whom the earlier of the two predicted events now lay in the past; but it was already implicit, though not so clear, in Mark.

The Hard Sayings of Jesus

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Day 8

CHILDLIKENESS

BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD

"Assuredly, I say to you,
whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it."
(Mark 10:15)

The declaration embodied in this verse, apparently very simple and certainly perfectly clear in its general sense, is not without its perplexities. The occasion was an incident in the life of our Lord which manifests his beautiful tenderness as few others of those narrated in the Gospels. The Evangelists fill their narratives with accounts of how the people flocked to Jesus, bringing all their sick and receiving healing of body and mind. But the people did not stop there. Mothers brought their babies also to Jesus and asked him to lay his hands on them and bless them too. Here his disciples drew the line. These babies were not sick and did not need the healing touch of the Great Physician. By the very fact that they were babies, they were incapable of profiting by his wonderful words. To intrude these babies upon his attention was to interfere unwarrantably with his pressing labors and supplant those who had superior claims on his time and strength. So the disciples rebuked the parents and would fain have sent the babies away.

But the Lord was moved with indignation and intervened: "Let the little children come to me, prevent them not." And taking them in his own arms, he laid his hands on them and blessed them. The word employed is a very emphatic one, meaning a calling down fervently of blessings upon the objects of the prayer. The mothers went away comforted, bearing their blessed babies in their arms.

Why was our Lord "moved with indignation" at his disciples for intercepting the approach of the mothers with their babies? Indignation was certainly out of place unless there was some very harmful misunderstanding somewhere. Let us engross ourselves in the explicit teaching for which this incident is recorded.

In this text, Jesus withdraws our minds from the literal children he had taken and blessed and focuses them upon the spiritual children who should constitute the Kingdom of Heaven. You will observe that he passes at once from the one to the other. When he says, "For of such is the Kingdom of God,' he does not mean that the Kingdom of God consists of literal infants, but rather of those who are like infants. The Kingdom of God is made up of people like these children whom our Lord took in his arms and blessed. And that being so, we are warned that no one can enter that Kingdom who does not receive it "like a little child." It certainly behooves you and me, who wish to be members of the Kingdom of God, to know what this childlikeness means.

Many think at once of the innocence of childhood. They say that the Kingdom of God consists solely of those who are, in their moral innocence, like children. Only such can enter it. A grave difficulty at once faces us, however, when we enunciate this view, namely, that Jesus does not seem elsewhere to announce innocence as the condition of entrance. On the contrary, he declared that he came not to call the righteous but sinners; that his mission was to seek and save what is lost. The publicans and harlots shall go into the Kingdom before the righteous Pharisees. To give point to this, we note that in Luke's narrative the parable of the publican and Pharisee praying in the temple immediately precedes the account of our present incident. It is placed there evidently because of the affinity of the two narratives. It would read exceedingly oddly if the publican was justified and the Pharisee (with all his righteousness) rejected, and immediately afterward it were asserted that the Kingdom was solely for the innocent. No, there is nothing clearer than that Jesus' mission was specifically to those who were not innocent.

Remembering the Pharisee and publican, shall we not say, then, that the trait of childhood here celebrated is at least humility? It was precisely humility that characterized the prayer of the publican, and our Lord elsewhere commends humility as in some sense the primary Christian grace. Indeed, it is this very thing spoken of when Jesus took and set a child among his disciples as they were disputing about who should be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven: "Truly I say unto you, except you turn and become as little children, you shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." It certainly seems as if, in that passage at least, the humility of little children is just the thing signalized, and entrance into the Kingdom is hung on the possession of that specific virtue. However, we must move warily. Is humility the special characteristic of childhood? Our Lord is telling those whom he was exhorting to become like a child, that they can only do it by humbling themselves. He tells them that they cannot become like little children except by humbling themselves, and, therefore, that when they were quarreling about greatness, they were not turning and becoming like little children. In this statement, humility is the pathway over which we must tread to attain something else which is the characterizing quality of childlikeness. And much less is humility suggested to us in our present passage. These babies that Jesus took into his arms--in what sense were they lowly minded?

Others have suggested that it is the simplicity of childhood which is spoken of. The mental life of a child is characterized, perhaps, by directness and lacks the double motives and complications of the adult intelligence. The child does not think of "serving two masters," but gives itself altogether to one thing or the other. Attractive as the idea is, it seems a little artificial and not easily deducible from the passage itself. These children were mere babies, and in what clear and outstanding sense are babies characterized by simplicity of heart and singleness of soul?

We feel that a great step is taken when others suggest that the particular trait which our Savior has in mind is the trustfulness of the child. Here we touch, indeed, what seems really the fundamental trait of the truly childish mind. The age of childhood is, above everything else, the age of trust. Dependent upon its elders for everything, the whole nature of the child is keyed to trust. But even yet, I think, we have scarcely reached the bottom fact. You will observe that all the suppositions made so far move in the subjective sphere. Dispositions of mind alone have been suggested; men have been seeking to discover the disposition of mind which is most characteristic of childhood. But our passage says nothing of dispositions of mind, and why should we? Why not seek an objective characteristic here?

We must now revert to the narrative and observe with care that these children were, in point of fact, mere babies. Perhaps we have been thinking of them as well-grown children and picturing them standing around our Lord's knees giving him eager, if wondering attention. Nothing of the kind. They were babies in arms, perhaps only a few weeks or months old, perhaps only a few days. They had no disposition of mind. Luke calls them distinctly infants and speaks, therefore, of their being brought: "They were bringing to him even their babies." And that is the reason why the disciples rebuked their parents. Mere babies could get nothing from the Master. What dispositions of soul were characteristic of them? Just none at all. They lay happy and thoughtless in their mother's arms and in Jesus' arms. Their characteristic was just helpless dependence; complete dependence upon the care of those whose care for them was necessary. And it would seem that it is just this objective, helpless dependence which is the point of comparison between them and the children of the Kingdom.

What our Lord would seem to say, then, is that the Kingdom of Heaven is made up of those who are helplessly dependent on the King of the Heavens. And when he adds that only those who "receive" the Kingdom like a child can enter it, he seems to mean that the children of the Kingdom come into it like children of the world come into the world--naked and stripped of everything, infants who are to be done for, who cannot do for themselves. There is every indication of this as our Lord's meaning. Among others, we note that the record of the incident is followed immediately in all three Gospels by the record of the incident of the rich young man, which goes on to illustrate the same idea. For what was the trouble with the rich young man? Just this: he could not divest himself of everything and come into the Kingdom naked. "He had great possessions." We can enter into this Kingdom only in the same way that poor, naked and helpless children enter the world.

The Kingdom of God is not taken, acquired, laid hold of; it is just "received." It comes to men; men do not come to it. And when it comes to men, they merely "receive" it "as a little child." That is to say, they bring nothing to it and have nothing to recommend them to it except their helplessness. They depend wholly on the King. He who will not humble himself and enter the Kingdom of God in the same way a little child enters the world--in utter nakedness and complete dependence--shall never see it.

Faith & Life

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Day 9

CHRISTIAN ESSENTIALS

THOMAS WITHEROW

It is very common for professing Christians to draw a distinction between essentials and non-essentials in religion, and to infer that if any fact or doctrine rightly belongs to the latter class, it must be a matter of very little importance, and may in practice be safely set at nought. The great bulk of men take their opinions on trust; they will not undergo the toil of thinking, searching, and reasoning about anything, and one of the most usual expedients adopted to save them the trouble of inquiry, and to turn aside the force of any disagreeable fact, is to meet it by saying, "The matter is not essential to salvation; therefore we need give ourselves little concern on the subject."

If the distinction here specified is safe, the inference drawn from it is certainly dangerous. To say that, because a fact of Divine revelation is not essential to salvation it must of necessity be unimportant, and may or may not be received by us, is to assert a principle, the application of which would make havoc of our Christianity. For, what are the truths essential to salvation? Are they not these: That there is a God; that all men are sinners; that the Son of God died upon the cross to make atonement for the guilty; and that whosoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved? There is good reason for believing that not a few souls are now in happiness, who in life knew little more than these--the first principles of the oracles of God, the very alphabet of the Christian system. And if so, no other Divine truths can be counted absolutely essential to salvation. But if all the other truths of revelation are unimportant because they happen to be non-essentials, it follows that the Word of God itself is in the main unimportant; for by far the greatest portion of it is occupied with matters, the knowledge of which, in the case supposed, is not absolutely indispensable to the everlasting happiness of men. Nor does it alter the case if we regard the number of fundamental truths to be much greater. Let a man once persuade himself that importance attaches only to what he is pleased to call essentials, whatever their number, and he will, no doubt, shorten his creed and cut away the foundation of many controversies; but he will practically set aside all except a very small part of the Scriptures. If such a principle does not mutilate the Bible, it stigmatizes much of it as trivial. Revelation is all gold for preciousness and purity, but the very touch of such a principle would transmute the most of it into dross.

Though every statement in the Scripture cannot be regarded as absolutely essential to salvation, yet everything there is essential to some other wise and important end, else it would not find a place in the good Word of God. Human wisdom may be baffled in attempting to specify the design of every truth that forms a component part of Divine revelation, but eternity will show us that no portion of it is useless. All Scripture is profitable. A fact written therein may not be essential to human salvation, and yet it may be highly conducive to some other great and gracious purpose in the economy of God--it may be necessary for our personal comfort, for our guidance in life, or for our growth in holiness, and most certainly it is essential to the completeness of the system of Divine truth. The law of the Lord is perfect. Strike out of the Bible the truth that seems the most insignificant of all, and the law of the Lord would not be perfect any more. Every fact, great or small, that God has been pleased to insert in the Bible is, by its very position, invested with importance, answers its end, and, though perhaps justly considered as non-essential to salvation, does not deserve to be accounted as worthless.

Every Divine truth is important, though it may be that all Divine truths are not of equal importance. The simplest statement of the Bible is a matter of more concern to an immortal being than the most sublime sentiment of mere human genius. The one carries with it what the other cannot show--the stamp of the approval of God. The one comes to us from heaven, the other savors of the earth. The one has for us a special interest, as forming a constituent portion of that Word which is a message from God to each individual man; the other is the production of a mind merely human, to which we and all our interests were alike unknown. Any truth merely human should weigh with us light as a feather in comparison with the most insignificant of the truths of God. The faith of a Christian should strive to reach and grasp everything that God has honored with a place in that Word, the design of which is to be a light to our feet as we thread our way through this dark world. Besides, this, unlike every other book, is not doomed to perish. Heaven and earth may pass away, but the words of Christ shall not pass away. The seal of eternity is stamped on every verse of the Bible. This fact is enough of itself to make very line of it important.

The Apostolic Church, Which is it?

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Day 10

HULDAH

EDITH DEEN

Though many of the Hebrews were given to idolatry and were ignorant of God, still the lamp of divine truth was kept burning in the heart of a woman. That woman was Huldah. To a high degree, Huldah possessed two great qualities--righteousness and prophetic insight. Because she possessed the former, she was able to use the latter wisely. This prophetic power, never entrusted to the undeserving, was given to her because she loved God with all her heart.

Evidently Huldah was known in the kingdom of Judah far and wide or she would never have been sought out by King Josiah, who sent five of his own personal messengers to her with the Book of the Law, which had been recently discovered during repairs in the Temple at Jerusalem. He had faith in Huldah's spiritual powers, and he wanted her to tell him whether the book was genuine or not. Here is a clue to Huldah's intellectual and spiritual perception.

The Scriptures give us no graphic description of this early Hebrew prophetess, except to say that she was the wife of Shallum, whose family had been singled out as keepers of the wardrobe, meaning either the priest's or the king's wardrobe, probably the latter. At least this would place her close to life inside the palace and Temple.

We can justly infer that she was a woman of distinction. Among the messengers that King Josiah sent to her were the high priest, Hilkiah, who had found hidden away this amazing roll of manuscript, the lost Book of the Law. Another messenger was Shaphan, the scribe in the temple, to whom Hilkiah had first taken the lost book. Parts of this book are still found in Deuteronomy. It is now thought to be the first book of the Bible that was canonized.

Only a deeply devout woman, one of real intellectual attainments, would have been sought out by a king and a priest to give her opinion as to whether or not this scroll was indeed the word of the Lord. It turned out to be one of the most important scrolls in the history of Israel. Huldah not only confirmed its authenticity, but also prophesied concerning the future, saying that the Lord would bring evil upon Judah, because the people had forsaken him and had turned instead to images. As a reward for Josiah's humility and tender heart, Huldah prophesied that he would be gathered unto his fathers before this terrible doom came upon Israel.

Commentators have questioned why King Josiah sent his personal messengers to consult a woman. Why were they not sent to a man? Josiah, who had come to rule at age eight, doubtless had learned to rely a great deal on his mother Jedidah as queen-mother. We know little about her, but we do know that Josiah's father Amon was murdered in his own palace by his servants because of his idolatry. But King Josiah centralized religion at Jerusalem, exalted the Levites, threw out the shrines of the false gods, and led his people to new spiritual heights. We naturally assume that the godly Josiah had a godly mother. Because of her, he would have a sympathetic appreciation of a woman as righteous and as spiritually discerning as Huldah.

Noteworthy it is that in the short account of Huldah's prophecy the scribe repeated four times her phrase, "Thus saith the Lord," making us know that Huldah did not think of herself as an oracle but only as a channel through which God's word came.

Huldah's prophecy gave King Josiah greater courage to put into action the laws written in the Book of the Law. After this, Josiah had the scroll read in the house of the Lord and made a covenant to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments. And because of it, he fought evil in Judah more zealously. High regard he had for Huldah's prophecy when he acted so promptly.

Only a woman who studied immutable spiritual laws and who prayed unceasingly could have been given insight into the mystery of the future. But Huldah was a woman who could throw back the veil of Israel's future because she had lived so close to God.

All of the Women of the Bible

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Day 11

THE DIVINE TRANSCENDENCE

A. W. TOZER

O Lord our Lord, there is none like Thee in heaven above or in the earth beneath. Thine is the greatness and the dignity and the majesty. All that is in the heaven and the earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, O God, and Thou art exalted as head over all. Amen

When we speak of God as transcendent, we mean of course that He is exalted far above the created universe, so far above that human thought cannot imagine it. To think accurately about this, however, we must keep in mind that ”far above” does not here refer to physical distance from the earth but to quality of being. We are concerned not with location in space nor with mere altitude, but with life.

God is spirit, and to Him magnitude and distance have no meaning. To us they are useful as analogies and illustrations, so God refers to them constantly when speaking down to our limited understanding. The words of God as found in Isaiah, ”Thus says the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity,” give a distinct impression of altitude, but that is because we who dwell in a world of matter, space, and time tend to think in material terms and can grasp abstract ideas only when they are identified in some way with material things. In its struggle to free itself from the tyranny of the natural world, the human heart must learn to translate upward the language the Spirit uses to instruct us.

It is spirit that gives significance to matter, and apart from spirit nothing has any value at last. A little child strays from a party of sightseers and becomes lost on a mountain, and immediately the whole mental perspective of the members of the party is changed. Rapt admiration for the grandeur of nature gives way to acute distress for the lost child. The group spreads out over the mountainside anxiously calling the child’s name and searching eagerly into every secluded spot where the little one might chance to be hidden.

What brought about this sudden change? The tree-clad mountain is still there towering into the clouds in breath-taking beauty, but no one notices it now. All attention is focused upon the search for a curly-haired little girl not yet two years old and weighing less than thirty pounds. Though so new and so small, she is more precious to parents and friends than all the huge bulk of the vast and ancient mountain they had been admiring a few minutes before. And in their judgment the whole civilized world concurs, for the little girl can love and laugh and speak and pray, and the mountain cannot. It is the child’s quality of being that gives it worth.

Yet we must not compare the being of God with any other as we just now compared the mountain with the child. We must not think of God as highest in an ascending order of beings, starting with the single cell and going on up from the fish to the bird to the animal to man to angel to cherub to God. This would be to grant God eminence, even pre-eminence, but that is not enough; we must grant Him transcendence in the fullest meaning of that word.

Forever God stands apart, in light unapproachable. He is as high above an archangel as above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is but finite, while the gulf between God and the archangel is infinite. The caterpillar and the archangel, though far removed from each other in the scale of created things, are nevertheless one in that they are alike created. They both belong in the category of that-which-is-not-God and are separated from God by infinitude itself.

Reticence and compulsion forever contend within the heart that would speak of God.

How shall polluted mortals dare
To sing Thy glory or Thy grace?
Beneath Thy feet we lie afar,
And see but shadows of Thy face.

(Isaac Watts)

Yet we console ourselves with the knowledge that it is God Himself who puts it in our hearts to seek Him and makes it possible in some measure to know Him, and He is pleased with even the feeblest effort to make Him known.

If some watcher or holy one who has spent his glad centuries by the sea of fire were to come to earth, how meaningless to him would be the ceaseless chatter of the busy tribes of men. How strange to him and how empty would sound the flat, stale and profitless words heard in the average pulpit from week to week. And were such a one to speak on earth would he not speak of God? Would he not charm and fascinate his hearers with rapturous descriptions of the Godhead? And after hearing him could we ever again consent to listen to anything less than theology, the doctrine of God? Would we not thereafter demand of those who would presume to teach us that they speak to us from the mount of divine vision or remain silent altogether?

When the psalmist saw the transgression of the wicked, his heart told him how it could be. ”There is no fear of God before his eyes,” he explained, and in so saying revealed to us the psychology of sin. When men no longer fear God, they transgress His laws without hesitation. The fear of consequences is not deterrent when the fear of God is gone.

In olden days men of faith were said to ”walk in the fear of God” and to ”serve the Lord with fear.” However intimate their communion with God, however bold their prayers, at the base of their religious life was the conception of God as awesome and dreadful. This idea of God transcendent runs through the whole Bible and gives color and tone to the character of the saints. This fear of God was more than a natural apprehension of danger; it was a nonrational dread, an acute feeling of personal insufficiency in the presence of God the Almighty.

Wherever God appeared to men in Bible times, the results were the same--an overwhelming sense of terror and dismay, a wrenching sensation of sinfulness and guilt. When God spoke, Abram stretched himself upon the ground to listen. When Moses saw the Lord in the burning bush, he hid his face in fear to look upon God. Isaiah’s vision of God wrung from him the cry, ”Woe is me!” and the confession, ”I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.” Daniel’s encounter with God was probably the most dreadful and wonderful of them all. The prophet lifted up his eyes and saw One whose ”body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.” ”I Daniel alone saw the vision” he afterwards wrote, ”for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength. Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground."

These experiences show that a vision of the divine transcendence soon ends all controversy between the man and his God. The fight goes out of the man and he is ready with the conquered Saul to ask meekly, ”Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”

Conversely, the self-assurance of modern Christians, the basic levity present in so many of our religious gatherings, the shocking disrespect shown for the Person of God, are evidence enough of deep blindness of heart. Many call themselves by the name of Christ, talk much about God, and pray to Him sometimes, but evidently do not know who He is. ”The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life,” but this healing fear is today hardly found among Christian men.

Once in conversation with his friend Eckermann, the poet Goethe turned to thoughts of religion and spoke of the abuse of the divine name. ”People treat it,” he said, ”as if that incomprehensible and most high Being, who is even beyond the reach of thought, were only their equal. Otherwise they would not say ‘the Lord God, the dear God, the good God.’ This expression becomes to them, especially to the clergy, who have it daily in their mouths, a mere phrase, a barren name, to which no thought whatever is attached. If they were impressed by His greatness they would be dumb, and through veneration unwilling to name Him."

Lord of all being, throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!

Lord of all life, below, above,
Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,
Before Thy ever-blazing throne
We ask no luster of our own.

(Oliver Wendell Holmes)

The Knowledge of the Holy

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Day 12

THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON

THEODOR ZAHN

This is the only letter in the New Testament which gives us a glimpse into a Christian household of that time. The father, Philemon, was converted through the influence of Paul, with whom he became acquainted probably in Ephesus. The wife and son were also Christians. While Archippus in some regular way served the Colossian Church, his father, Philemon, appears to have assisted more generally in spreading the gospel in his vicinity. Because of this service, Paul calls him the fellow worker of Timothy and himself. He must have been a well-to-do citizen of Colossae, which was at that time a flourishing commercial city. His house served as the meeting place for a part of the local Church. He was in a position where he could show the loyalty of his love to his fellow believers by a rather wide-reaching beneficence. Only recently he had offered new proof of this practical love to "the saints," of which Paul is able to think only with joyful gratitude.

This liberality on the part of Philemon is emphasized so strongly because Paul is about to make a further demand upon his generosity. His request concerns Onesimus, who, in addition to being unprofitable to his master, had run away, apparently stealing the money necessary for the journey. Now, however, he has been converted through Paul's ministry in Rome, and the apostle seeks to restore him to his master's house.

All that Paul asks in the letter is that Philemon receive in a kindly spirit the penitent refugee who had now become a fellow believer with him. He does not ask this in any authoritative way, although he had a right to do so, but in a brotherly spirit. No question is raised as to Philemon's right of possession in the future, recognition of which right prevented Paul from retaining Onesimus, to whom he had become attached and who was peculiarly adapted to serve his personal needs. At the most, Paul no more than hints his desire that Philemon give Onesimus his freedom when he expresses the expectation that Philemon will do more than Paul requests. Paul by no means thinks that Philemon will receive the guilty slave with kindness at once and of his own accord, but uses every means in his power so to dispose him.

At the very beginning, where he praises Philemon for his generous brotherly love, Paul does not fail to intimate that he would like to see Philemon make still further progress in this direction. The indignation which Philemon had felt at Onesimus' conduct should be mitigated, among other things, by the consideration that now instead of a worthless slave he has a useful servant. Concerning the money which Philemon had lost through Onesimus' unfaithfulness, Paul makes himself personally responsible, this letter in his own hand being formal security for the debt. Although, as the added remark indicates, Paul had no idea that Philemon would hold him strictly responsible for the payment of the sum in question, undoubtedly he did intend a humorous thrust at the weak side of this man, who possibly was liberal enough in large matters but inclined to reckon closely in small affairs. Paul continues the same humorous vein when he adds, "Yes, my brother, I should like to profit at your expense." Some of the salt with which he seasons his own words he takes for granted in his readers. We observe the same humorous spirit in Paul's request for Philemon to now make ready for him quarters in his house, when, as a matter of fact, Paul was anticipating a protracted continuance of his preaching in Rome. The apostle gives himself an invitation to visit the stern householder. It is as if he had said, "I shall find out shortly whether Onesimus, my 'child', my 'heart', my beloved brother, has been received by you in the way I requested."

The letter is a striking example of that unaffected art by which Paul was able to touch the heart so as to win to himself and his cause everyone not entirely devoid of feeling. The humor of the letter does not lessen its earnestness, nor does its irony affect its warmth. It combines politeness and dignity, recognition of the hard rights of this world with defense of the highest demands for the fuller exercise of Christian love.

Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. 1

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Day 13

INTERPRETATION OF OLD TESTAMENT PREDICTIONS

MERRILL C. TENNEY

When Jesus first informed the disciples that he would rise from the dead, they did not comprehend his meaning, but afterward they recalled his words and "believed the scripture." Though John, who recorded the incident, did not identify any single Old Testament source, he implied that the disciples should have understood Jesus' words immediately from their knowledge of the sacred canon. The New Testament presupposes that the Law and the Prophets contained predictions, obscure or unrecognized at first, but clarified later by the manifestation of Christ.

THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC

Recounting the heroic acts of faith, the writer of Hebrews connected the sacrifice of Isaac with the idea of resurrection. "By faith Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac: yea, he that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; even he to whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead; from whence he did also in a figure receive him back" (Heb. 11:17-19).

A comparison with the original account in Genesis 22:1-19 reveals several surprising features. The promises which God had given to Abraham centered in Isaac and would normally find their fulfillment through his life. If Abraham's descendants were to be multiplied as the stars of heaven, Isaac would have to survive long enough to marry and to have children, for his death would effectually close the succession on which the perpetuation of the seed depended. The command seemed to be a contradiction, for how could God consistently make a promise and then remove all possibility of fulfillment? Abraham was forced into the dilemma of disobeying God's word to retain the fulfillment of the promise, or else of relinquishing faith in his truthfulness. The only solution for the impasse would be obedience, based on the belief that God would restore Isaac from the dead.

Another interesting aspect of this account is that Abraham seemed to have possessed the requisite faith. Accompanied by two servants to the mountain of Moriah, where the sacrifice had been appointed, Abraham and Isaac left them behind to make the slow ascent. Parting from them, Abraham said, "Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder; and we will worship and come again to you." These words could be interpreted as a subterfuge to conceal Isaac's prospective fate from the servants, but a fuller consideration of the context indicates otherwise. Abraham was confident that Isaac would return with him, because he believed that even if he died God would restore him. His perfect confidence in the character and promises of God despite the inexplicable paradox of his command is expressed in his words to Isaac, "God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering."

Through this experience God was endeavoring to disclose to Abraham in pictorial form the meaning of the coming incarnation and atonement. The whole episode reveals a father who loves his only son; a son who is of one mind with the father; a willingness to surrender life itself that the father's purpose may be accomplished; the potential completion of the entire act of sacrifice; and the restoration of the son to life that he may carry out the full measure of the father's plan. Abraham on Mount Moriah participated in a dramatic projection of Calvary and the resurrection. Perhaps Jesus was alluding to this episode when he said, "Abraham rejoiced to see my day...and was glad."

THE EXODUS

Another prophecy may be found in the national experience of Israel. When Moses and Elijah appeared with Christ on the mount of Transfiguration, they spoke of his "exodus" which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. The term refers to his death, as a parallel in II Peter 1:15 indicates. It may, however, apply also to his Passion as a whole, in which case it would include the empty tomb and the ascension.

The Exodus of Israel was the redemption and resurrection of a nation. Jacob and his sons had migrated into Egypt in time of famine. They settled in the land of Goshen, where their descendants remained until a king arose who enslaved them, making their lives miserable by repressive legislation and by forced labor. Finally God sent Moses, who united the people and instituted the Passover. In this feast the blood of a sacrificial lamb was sprinkled on the lintel and doorposts of each Israelite house. As the angel of death passed through the land of Egypt on his grim errand, the Israelites who had complied with the Passover regulations were spared and marched out of Egypt to begin a new life. From the slavery of oppression and from the condemnation of death, they crossed the Red Sea into a new liberty.

For Jesus, the resurrection was an exodus from bondage. Having shared with mankind the oppressive limitations imposed by the consequences of sin, he passed through the waters of death and emerged triumphant. As the Israelites under Moses' leadership gained their freedom from Egypt's tyranny, so believers in Christ participate in Christ's triumph. John of Damascus caught this imagery in his hymn:

Come, ye faithful, raise the strain
Of triumphant gladness;
God has brought his Israel
Into joy from sadness.
Loosed from Pharaoh's bitter yoke
Israel's sons and daughters;
Led them with unmoistened foot
Through the Red Sea waters.

The Reality of the Resurrection

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Day 14

THE MARK OF TRUE CONVERSION

GEORGE WHITEFIELD

"Verily, I say to you, except you be converted and become as little children,
you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 18:3

In what sense are we are to understand these words? The Evangelist tells us, "that the disciples at this time came unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" These disciples had believed the common prevailing notion that the Lord Jesus Christ was to be a temporal prince. They dreamed of nothing but being ministers of state, of sitting at Christ's right hand in his kingdom and lording it over God's people. "Which of us shall have the chief management of public affairs?" A pretty question for a few poor fishermen who scarcely knew how to drag their nets to shore, much less how to govern a kingdom. Our Lord, therefore, in order to mortify them, calls a little child and sets him in the midst of them. "Truly I say to you, that you are so far from being in a right temper for my kingdom, that except you be converted and become as this little child (loose to the world, crowns, scepters, kingdoms, and earthly things) you shall not enter into my kingdom." As to ambition and lust after the world, we must in this sense become as little children. Ask a poor little child about a crown, scepter, or kingdom, and the little child has no idea what you're talking about. If we are really converted, we shall be loose from the world. Though we are engaged in it, we shall not hold tightly to it. We will also be sensible of our weakness. However we may have thought of ourselves once, whatever were our former highly exalted imaginations, we shall now feel "that we are poor, miserable, blind, and naked."

I have something to say by way of personal application. My dear friends, this text is introduced in an awful manner: "Truly I say to you." What Jesus said then, he says now to you and me. Let me exhort you to see whether you are converted; whether such a great and almighty change has passed upon your soul. "Verily I say to you, except you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." It may be that within just another twenty-four hours, many of you will be carried into an unalterable state. If it is your desire to dwell with God, then before I go any further, silently put up this prayer: "Lord, search me and try me. Examine my heart and let my conscience speak. O let me know whether I am converted or not!"

Many of you are unconverted. Begin now and pray to God, "Lord, convert me! Make me a little child. Let me not be banished from thy kingdom!" My dear friends, there is a great deal more implied in the words, "You shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." It is as much to say, "You shall certainly go to hell. You shall certainly be damned and dwell in the blackness of darkness forever." The Lord God impress it upon your souls! May an arrow dipped in the blood of Christ reach every unconverted sinner's heart! May God fulfill the text to every one of your souls! It is he alone who can do it. If you confess your sins, leave them, and lay hold on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God shall be given you. Precious souls, think what will become of you when you die, if you die without being converted. You shall be banished from his presence forever and ever. I show you a way of escape. Jesus is the way, Jesus is the truth. The Lord Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. It is his Spirit who must convert you. Come to Christ, and you shall have it!

ondoctrine.com/2whi0901.htm

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Day 15

LOCUSTS

WILLIAM M. THOMSON

"Has anything like this happened in your days,
or even in the days of your fathers?"
Joel 1:2

I once witnessed a curious and striking incident when traveling in the area of Kabul. The whole region then swarmed with locusts, and great efforts were being made to destroy them. The governor of the district had summoned the entire population--men, women, and children--to engage in the work of extirpation. The people, forming a wide circle, were beating the bushes and shouting at the top of their voices in order to drive the locusts onto an isolated hill covered with dry grass and thorn bushes. The locusts had not yet formed wings and could, therefore, be driven before that noisy cordon. The whole hillside soon became black with countless numbers of locusts, and the grass was set on fire in many different places. A strong breeze blew from the west, and the entire hill was speedily ablaze. With this fierce conflagration spreading far and wide, the atmosphere soon became pervaded with an overpowering odor of roast locust, and we hastened to escape. I saw the same operation, though on a smaller scale, in several other places during that day's ride.

In some parts of the land, as in the eastern desert, locusts can reappear every year, and they are indeed a terrible calamity. The first time I saw them in this country was on the hill above Fuliyeh. Noticing something peculiar on the hillside, I rode up to examine it when, to my amazement, the whole surface became agitated and began to roll down the declivity. My horse was so frightened that I was obliged to dismount. The locusts were very young, not yet able even to jump. They had the shape, however, of minute grasshoppers. Their numbers seemed infinite, and in their haste to get out of my way, they literally rolled over and over like fluid mortar. Several years after that I became better acquainted with these insects on Mount Lebanon.

Early that spring, the locusts appeared in considerable numbers along the seacoast and on the lower spurs of the mountains. They did not do significant damage at the time, and, having laid their eggs, immediately disappeared. The people, familiar with their habits, looked with anxiety to the time when those eggs would hatch. Their fears were not groundless or exaggerated. For several days previous to the first of June, we had heard that thousands of young locusts were on their march up the valley toward our village, and at length I was told that they had reached the lower part of it.

Summoning all the people I could collect, we went to meet and attack them, hoping to stop their progress altogether, or at least to turn aside the line of their march. Never shall I lose the impression produced by the first view of them. I had often passed through clouds of flying locusts, but these we now confronted were without wings and about the size of full-grown grasshoppers, which they closely resembled in appearance and behavior. Their number was astounding; the whole face of the mountain was black with them. On they came like a disciplined army. We dug trenches and kindled fires; we beat and burned to death "heaps upon heaps," but the effort was utterly useless. They charged up the mountainside and climbed over rocks, wall, ditches, and hedges, those behind covering up and passing over the masses already killed. After a long and fatiguing contest, I descended the mountain to examine the length of the column, but I could not see the end of it. Wearied by my hard-fought battle, I returned and gave up the vain effort to stop its progress for that day.

By the next morning, the head of the column had reached my garden, and, hiring eight or ten people, I resolved to rescue at least any flowers and vegetables. During the day we succeeded--by fire, and by beating the locusts off the walls with bushes and branches--in keeping our little garden tolerably clear of them, but it was appalling to watch that irresistible army as it marched up the road and ascended the hill above my house. At length, worn out with incessant skirmishing, I gave up. Carrying the pots into the house and covering up what else I could, I surrendered the remainder to the conquerors. For four days they continued to pass on toward the east, until finally only a few stragglers of the mighty host were left behind.

In every stage of their existence, the locusts give a most impressive view of the power of God to punish a wicked world. Observe the pioneers of the host, those flying squadrons that appear in early spring. No power of man can interrupt them; thousands on thousands, with most fatal industry, deposit their innumerable eggs in the field, plain and desert. This done, they vanish like morning mist. But in six or eight weeks, the very dust seems to waken into life and begins to creep. Soon this animated earth becomes minute grasshoppers, and creeping and jumping all in the same general direction, they begin their destructive progress. While on the march, they consume every green thing with wonderful eagerness and expedition. A large vineyard and vegetable garden adjoining ours was as green as a meadow in the morning, but long before night, it was as bare as a newly plowed field or dusty road. The noise made by them in marching and foraging was like that of a heavy shower falling upon a distant forest.

The references to the habits and behavior of locusts in the Bible are very striking and accurate. Joel says, "He has laid waste My vine, and ruined My fig tree; He has stripped it bare and thrown it away; its branches are made white." The locusts at once strip the vines of every leaf and cluster of grapes and of every green twig. I also saw many large fig orchards "clean bare," not a leaf remaining; and as the bark of the fig tree is of a silvery whiteness, the whole orchards were made white in melancholy nakedness to the burning sun. Joel says again, "How the animals groan! The herds of cattle are restless, because they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment." A field over which this army of desolation has passed shows not a blade of grass for even a goat to nip.

The prophet Nahum says that the locusts "camp in the hedges on a cold day; when the sun rises they flee away, and the place where they are is not known." To anyone who has attentively watched the habits of the locust, that allusion is very striking. In the evening, as soon as the air becomes cool, they literally camp in the hedges and loose stone walls, covering them over like a swarm of bees settled on a bush. There they remain until the next day's sun waxes warm, when they again commence their march. If the day is cool, the locusts scarcely move at all from their camps, and multitudes remain actually stationary until the next morning. It is an aggravation of the calamity if the weather continues cool, for then they prolong their stay and do far more damage.

I am not surprised that Pharaoh's servants remonstrated against his folly and madness when they heard the plague of locusts announced. The coming of locusts is a sore judgment from God.

The Land and The Book

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Day 16

A HALF-LEARNED CHRIST

BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD

"But Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.'" (John 6:68,69)

The first impression made on us by this response of Peter's to our Lord's appeal, "Surely you too will not wish to go?" is the nobility of the confession which it contains. We are not surprised to find one of the commentators, therefore, speaking of it as "this immortal reply". Nor are we surprised that it is commonly treated by commentators and expounders alike from this point of view. Surely, the verse does contain, fundamentally, a confession of Peter's and, through him, of the apostles' faith. At bottom, this confession means that these men were seeking in Jesus satisfaction for spiritual and not carnal needs. They understood him incomparably better than the crowds of carnal men which had hitherto surrounded him, and finding satisfaction in him for their spiritual needs, they could not leave him as the others did. However puzzling he spoke, they could not fail to recognize in Jesus the very consecrated messenger from God whom their hearts craved.

At that time and in those circumstances, this meant incredibly much. But there is another side to the declaration, and this other side is obviously the side that was in John's mind when he recorded it. For clearly he does not put it forward as a supreme confession, marking a complete appreciation of Jesus' person and claims. When Jesus turned to this innermost circle of his followers with the sorrowful inquiry, "Surely you too will not go away?" he obtained, no doubt, a reassurance. No, they would cleave to him. And this reassurance must have been a balm to his wounded human spirit. But the reassurance he obtained was so little to his mind that he felt it necessary to meet it with a rebuke: "Was it not I that chose you--the twelve--and of you one is diabolical!" This very confession was a manifestation of how little even those who were nearest to him really understood him or were ready to carry on his work. Surely it will not be without its lessons to us to trace out and seek, without derogating from the essential nobility of the confession, the elements of incompleteness that enter into it and make it less than what a confession of Christ ought to be.

First of all, we notice that there seems to be an element of boastfulness in this confession. This is suggested by the obtrusion of the personal pronoun. We might read our English version and think of the emphasis falling on the believing and knowing which is asserted. We cannot so read the Greek. The emphasis falls rather on the "we". "And as for us," says Peter, "we at least" have believed. Peter is contrasting himself and his fellow apostles with the others and priding himself on the contrast. We will remember that our Lord had just said, "The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life; but there are of you some who do not believe." Peter seems to swell with pride to think that he is not of these. Repeating his Master's words, he says, "Thou hast words of eternal life, and as for us, we, at least, have believed!" We perceive the pride in his faith which dictated the words. And now we understand the sharpness of our Lord's rebuke with its emphasis on the personal pronoun. "You boast yourselves," replies Jesus, "that you at least have believed. Was it, after all, you that believed in me, or I that chose you, the twelve? And even so, of you, one at least is a devil!"

How plain the lesson is to us. A warning clear, sharp, and overwhelming against all spiritual pride. I am afraid that we too are prone to pride ourselves on what we have only received, as if by our own power we had done these things. There is nothing more unlovely than pride in spiritual things. Do we not feel it moving in us in the precise form in which it attacked Peter? Are we not inclined to boast that we have believed in Jesus as if it were the mark of some peculiar excellence in us? But, brethren, if we do indeed believe, who is it that has made us thus to differ? Is it that we have believed, or that he, our Lord and Master, has chosen us? Humility, not pride, is the root of the Christian life; glorying in God the Savior, and not boasting of ourselves, is becoming in us. So shall we learn Peter's lesson: "It is not you that have believed, but I that have chosen!"

We notice, in the second place, that Peter's confession in its form looks very much like what we may perhaps call a counsel of despair. "Lord, to whom shall we go?" he asks, "Thou hast words of eternal life." There is no emphasis on the "Thou"; indeed, there is no "Thou" at all in the Greek. Christ's person, in other words, is not put prominently forward. It is rather conspicuously kept in the background. Neither is there any article to give significance to "words of eternal life." The phrase is purely general. Peter has found "words of eternal life" in Jesus' talk; that is all. In fact, there is little more here than an echo of our Lord's words a few verses earlier. Our Lord had declared that the words He had spoken were words of spirit and life. Peter appears to acquiesce rather than exhibit intense conviction. As a spiritually minded man in search of spiritual nourishment, Peter's heart was keyed to and set upon eternal things--the everlasting welfare of his soul rather than the temporal pleasures of his body. He finds satisfaction in Christ. He finds such satisfaction in him as he had found in no one else. He cannot look with anything but dismay at losing him. He recognized Jesus as unique among the teachers of Israel and rejoices in him as such. But there Peter seems half inclined to stop. And to stop there is to stop fatally short of a true appreciation of Jesus. There is something negative rather than positive attaching to this position. There is no adequate entering into the supremeness of Jesus' claims. There is only a recognition that none better than he could be found. Now, it is not its uniqueness that makes something really precious to us. That is a negative attribute. It is the appreciation of the positive content of preciousness in anything which makes that thing unique--because nothing conceivable could surpass it or take its place.

It is well worth our while to ask ourselves seriously if we are perhaps adhering to Christ only because we have no one else to go to. Is our reason for enrolling ourselves in his service summed up only in this--that we know of no one better? But a better does not and cannot exist. Christ's uniqueness is absolute, and our attitude to it must be a positive and not a negative one. There is enthusiasm demanded here. Let us be bound to Christ by a true appreciation of what he actually is, and we will never question whether perchance we may not sometime discover a better. To separate from him would be to separate from all that makes life worth living.

And this leads us to notice an element of (shall we say?) selfishness in Peter's confession. Peter adheres to Jesus because, so he says, he does not know where else to find the blessings which he wants. Now Peter was a spiritually minded man seeking not earthly but heavenly good. This is greatly to his credit. It shows a high and noble nature with high and noble aspirations, living on a high and noble plane. But it is possible to be selfish even on this high plane, and a dash of this selfishness seems to show itself in Peter's confession. He cleaves to Christ for what reason? Because his longing for words of eternal life is satisfied by Christ. Surely we will feel that there is something lacking in this attitude, the attitude which cleaves to Jesus because we do not know where else to go to obtain what we want, even though we want the highest good--eternal life itself. Does it not place it on a distinctly lower plane than that fine self-abandonment which cleaves to another, like Ruth to Naomi, out of pure appreciation and love?

There is a proper self-seeking, a proper place for self-love. It is not wrong, but distinctly right, to long for heaven. That we find all the higher needs of our souls satisfied in Christ is surely no mean commendation of him to us. The desire for eternal life is no low longing. He who can supply this desire is worthy of our adherence and love. There is assuredly a place in life for all these things. But after all, they are not quite the highest things. They are the things with which we should begin, not those with which we should end. Let us come to Christ for our own sakes, but when having come we find all that he is, let us learn to love him and cleave to him for his own sake. For his own sake, because he is altogether lovely and one to be desired above our chief joy.

To do this we must, of course, know Jesus as he is and in all that he is. And here we see the final flaw in Peter's confession. He had not yet come to know Christ fully. Had he known Christ fully, he never would or could have confessed him with a boastful spirit as if he had found Christ out instead of having been found by him; with half-hearted zeal as if Jesus were only the best he had yet found; and with a somewhat selfish outlook as if it were only because he could obtain from him satisfaction for his felt needs.

I am not blaming Peter for not yet knowing Christ better. It is rather wonderful, when all is considered, that he knew him actually so well and was ready boldly to declare him to be "God's Holy One" in the presence of the great defection which was going on at that moment. But there is a great deal more than this to be known and confessed about Jesus, and Peter afterward learned it. The point of importance to us is, Have we learned it? We may be quite sure that our whole attitude to Christ will turn on the fulness and the intimacy with which we know him. We have no such excuses as Peter had for not knowing Christ in all the fulness of his being and all the splendor of his nature. He must be something more to us than "the historical Christ". The historical Christ, yes, but also the exalted Christ. Christ our Prophet, yes, and Christ our King; but also Christ our Priest and Christ our Sacrifice. Christ that died and also Christ that rose again. The Son of Man and also the Son of God. To Peter he was not as yet all these things, though Peter was feeling his way toward them. To us he is all these things, and more, even Christ the All in All.

Ah, brethren, if we could only see Christ in his beauty, how our hearts would go out to him! No boastful, half-hearted, selfish confession then. Only adoration, joy, and unspeakable satisfaction.

Faith & Life

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Day 17

ADORNING THE GOSPEL

JOHN MURRAY

How far short we come of adorning the gospel! I am convinced that piety is a rare plant. Formal profession is common, but piety in the sense of godliness is not.

What is piety? It is godliness. Godliness is God-consciousness, an all-pervasive sense of God's presence. It will mean that we never think, speak, or act without the undergirding sense of God's presence, of his judgment, of our relation to him and his relation to us, of our responsibility to him, and our dependence upon him. This God-consciousness is spoken of as the fear of God, the profound reverence for his majesty and the dread of his judgments. It comes to us only through revelation, and this is principally for us the Scriptures.

The Word of God is relevant to all of life, and therefore, to all the relations we sustain to our fellow men. In our human relations, to what extent do we bring the mind, judgment, and will of God to bear upon our viewpoint, our assessment of situations, our conduct? To what extent are our speech, reactions, and responses theistically conditioned? The whole case of manward expression is focused in this consideration, for it drives us back to the exercises of piety itself--the study of God's Word, meditation, and prayer.

Nothing is more prejudicial to the adornment of the gospel and the manward expression of faith than to be long on profession and short on integrity. What contradiction! What occasion given to the adversary to speak reproachfully and to blaspheme if profession is not complemented by the basic elements of morality. Dishonesty, untruth, impurity, grasping, greed, intemperance, loose talk, gossip, slander, irreverent use of the name of God, sacrilegious and salacious humor--they all make profession a travesty of Christian witness.

Godliness will express itself in meekness. The world mistakes meekness for weakness. And we are liable to succumb to the world's estimate of strength and fight fire with fire. Meekness is to be contrasted with retaliation, reviling, vengefulness, backbiting, unholy temper, envy, strife, malice. Humility is the companion of meekness, just as pride is the companion of envy.

Godliness will express itself in compassion. This comprises a group of virtues such as generosity, hospitality, mercy. It has respect to the destitute condition of others and is the expression of love. It means that we identify ourselves with the condition of other people, particularly the poor and the afflicted.

Godliness will express itself in cheerfulness. When we suffer reverse, calamity, or affliction, do we behave as if the bottom had fallen out of the universe? Do we show composure, tranquility, resignation, gratitude, thanksgiving? Do we show patience in adversity, gratitude in prosperity, and confident assurance respecting the future? This touches the heart of godliness. Do we believe in the living God, and that the very hairs of our head are all numbered? Let us express this in the day of adversity, not by forced hypocritical smiles that belie our inmost attitude, but by the confident assurance that God reigns, and not a sparrow falls to the ground without his knowledge. Fretful, gnawing, distrusting, unbelieving anxiety is a denial of faith.

Godliness will express itself in the proclamation of the Gospel. "Be ready always to give a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." There are three things that need to be stressed: sincerity, earnestness, and urgency. We are never to be self-assertive; that is pride. We are never to have a superiority complex; that is the opposite of meekness. We must never act as if we had in ourselves a reservoir of resources to meet every situation. But let us never be apologetic about the gospel. Let us never have an inferiority complex respecting the gospel, but forthrightness and confidence arising from the conviction that there is none other name given under heaven among men whereby men must be saved, that it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes.

Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 1

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Day 18

REGENERATION

LOUIS BERKHOF

Relative to the nature of regeneration, there are several misconceptions which should be avoided. It may be well to mention these first, before stating the positive qualifications of this re-creative work of God.

MISCONCEPTIONS: (a) Regeneration is not a change in the substance of human nature. No new physical seed or germ is implanted in man; neither is there any addition to, or subtraction from, the faculties of the soul. (b) Neither is it simply a change in one or more of the faculties of the soul, as, for instance, of the emotional life (feeling or heart), by removing the aversion to divine things, as some evangelicals conceive of it; or of the intellect, by illuminating the mind that is darkened by sin, as the Rationalists regard it. It affects the heart, understood in the Scriptural sense of the word, that is, as the central and all-controlling organ of the soul, out of which are the issues of life. This means that it affects human nature as a whole. (c) Nor is it a complete or perfect change of the whole nature of man, or any part of it, so that it is no more capable of sin. This does not mean that it does not in principle affect the entire nature of man, but only that it does not constitute the whole change that is wrought in man by the operation of the Holy Spirit. It does not comprise conversion and sanctification.

POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF REGENERATION. First, regeneration consists in the implanting of the principle of the new spiritual life in man, in a radical change of the governing disposition of the soul, which, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, gives birth to a life that moves in a Godward direction. In principle this change affects the whole man: the intellect, the will, and the feelings or emotions.

Second, it is an instantaneous change of man's nature, affecting at once the whole man, intellectually, emotionally, and morally. The assertion that regeneration is an instantaneous change implies two things: (1) That it is not a work that is gradually prepared in the soul, as the Roman Catholics and all Semi-Pelagians teach; there is no intermediate stage between life and death; one either lives or is dead. (2) That it is not a gradual process like sanctification.

Third, it is in its most limited sense a change that occurs in the sub-conscious life. It is a secret and inscrutable work of God that is never directly perceived by man. The change may take place without man's being conscious of it momentarily, though this is not the case when regeneration and conversion coincide; and even later on he can perceive it only in its effects. This explains the fact that a Christian may, on the one hand, struggle for a long time with doubts and uncertainties, and can yet, on the other hand, gradually overcome these and rise to the heights of assurance.

DEFINITION OF REGENERATION. Regeneration is that act of God by which the principle of the new life is implanted in man, and the governing disposition of the soul is made holy. But in order to include the idea of the new birth as well as that of the "begetting again," it will be necessary to complement the definition with the following words: "and the first holy exercise of this new disposition is secured."

Systematic Theology

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Day 19

TRUE CONVERSION

LOUIS BERKHOF

True conversion is born of a godly sorrow, and issues in a life of devotion to God. It is a change that is rooted in the work of regeneration and that is effected in the conscious life of the sinner by the Spirit of God; a change of thoughts and opinions, of desires and volitions, which involves the conviction that the former direction of life was unwise and wrong and alters the entire course of life. There are two sides to this conversion, the one active and the other passive; the former being the act of God, by which he changes the conscious course of man's life, and the latter the result of this action as seen in man's changing his course of life and turning to God.

Consequently, a twofold definition must be given of conversion: (1) Active conversion is that act of God whereby He causes the regenerated sinner, in his conscious life, to turn to Him in repentance and faith. (2) Passive conversion is the resulting conscious act of the regenerated sinner whereby he, through the grace of God, turns to God in repentance and faith.

Conversion belongs to the re-creative rather than to the judicial acts of God. It does not alter the state but the condition of man. In conversion man becomes conscious of the fact that he is worthy of condemnation and is also brought to a recognition of that fact. While this already presupposes faith, it also leads to a greater manifestation of faith in Jesus Christ, a confident trusting in Him for salvation. And this faith, in turn, by appropriating the righteousness of Jesus Christ, is instrumental in the sinner's justification. In conversion man awakens to the joyous assurance that all his sins are pardoned on the basis of the merits of Jesus Christ.

Conversion takes place, not in the subconscious, but in the conscious life of the sinner. This does not mean that it is not rooted in the subconscious life. Being a direct effect of regeneration, it naturally includes a transition in the operations of the new life from the subconscious to the conscious life.

Conversion marks the conscious beginning, not only of the putting away of the old man, a fleeing from sin, but also of the putting on of the new man, a striving for holiness of life. This does not mean, however, that the struggle between the old and the new is at once ended; it will continue as long as man lives.

While conversion may be a sharply marked crisis, it may also be a very gradual change. Crisis conversions are most frequent in days of religious declension, and in the lives of those who have not enjoyed the privileges of a real religious education and who have wandered far from the path of truth, righteousness, and holiness.

When we speak of conversion, we have in mind a supernatural work of God resulting in a religious change.

Systematic Theology

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Day 20

"AND THEY STONED STEPHEN"

CHARLES J. VAUGHAN

The subject which lies now before us is the record of a martyrdom; the violent and suffering end of the first Christian man who was called to give his life for the testimony of Jesus. Let us devote some moments to the contemplation of that saint and servant of the Lord, whose cruel yet glorious end is here set before us. Let us strive so to enter into his faith and hope and charity, that we may all follow him, in life and in death, even as he first followed Christ.

First, Stephen never lost faith. He did not say to himself, "All these things are against me." He did not say, "If Christ had designed to own my work, he would not thus have cut it short." He did not say, "If this be the manner in which Christ's cause prospers below, how can I believe that he himself lives and reigns above?" None of these things. Never was his faith so strong or his vision so unclouded as in that last clamorous riotous scene in which life itself was to be sacrificed. While his enemies are rushing upon him with one accord, his eyes are fixed steadfastly on heaven. He bears one last, one crowning witness to Christ's risen life, to his resistless power, to his omnipresent grace: "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."

Second, we see with what hopefulness of mind and quietness of spirit does Stephen address himself to this sudden, cruel, and shameful suffering. In the midst of the uproar of angry voices and the flight of blinding, stupefying, crushing stones, he has a majesty of meekness and a power of prayer not given to others in seasons of tranquility and repose. All the time he is calling upon his Master and saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Not in the manner in which men use that sacred name of God or Christ as a mere expression of pain or disquietude or weakness, or in the ignorant ejaculations sometimes heard from a sinner's deathbed, when for the first time he feels himself in the grasp of a mightier power which must be propitiated by abject invocation, but he calls in the tone of one who knows in whom he has believed.

Lastly, we notice the example here given us of an exhaustless charity. As the end approaches, as the buffeted, tortured, mangled frame begins to totter to its dissolution, the dying martyr kneels down upon the blood-stained earth and collects every energy of soul and body for one last crowning act of worship. That posture with which we allow any little excuse to interfere, that reverent bending of the knee in God's worship which many of us never practice even in God's house, which few of us would practice in a season of pain or sickness, Stephen deemed the fittest attitude even for a dying man. He would honor God with his body as well as with his spirit. And then, with a loud voice he cried, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." He prays not, as some have done, that the murderers may find out their sin one day in punishment; he prays not even that the blood shed this day may produce a speedy and abundant harvest; but he prays that that cruel deed which is still running on to its accomplishment may never be weighed in God's balances against the souls of its perpetrators. Thus he prayed; and in one case at least we know that his prayer was heard and answered. There was one at least among those murderers to whom God afterward granted the grace of repentance unto life, and who now for many centuries has rested with his victim in the joys and perfect charities of heaven.

Studies in the Book of Acts

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Day 21

INSPIRATION

EDWARD. J. YOUNG

"Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." (2 Peter 1:20,21)

One of the best ways to attack something is to demonstrate that it is unimportant, and that is precisely what some writers attempt to accomplish with respect to the Biblical doctrine of verbal inspiration. The originals of Scripture are lost, so it is argued, and we cannot completely reconstruct them. Therefore, those originals must have been unimportant. Evidently God did not think that it was necessary for us to have them. If a man wishes to do scholarly work on the Bible, he must use the Greek and the Hebrew texts which are available to him. He cannot obtain the original, and must be content with the texts at hand. More than that, the plain man who turns to the Bible for his devotional study must be content with a Bible in his own vernacular. He is removed from the original even a step further. Consequently, all this talk about an inspired and errorless original text is really beside the point. Furthermore, even if there were errors in the original, this would not hinder us from receiving a blessing from the Bible; and we would be foolish indeed if we were to maintain that, unless the original were free of errors, we could receive no blessing from the Bible.

But is the doctrine of an errorless autographa of Scripture actually so unimportant after all? A little reflection, we think, will make it clear that such is not at all the case. Let us suppose that the Scriptures actually were given to us by a special revelation of God. If they are indeed breathed forth from the mouth of God, does it matter whether they contain in them statements which are contrary to fact? To ask the question in this fashion is, of course, to answer it. It matters tremendously, for the veracity of God Himself is at stake.

How disturbing is the annoyance of tiny inaccuracies! Upon receiving a letter filled with trifling errors and misspelled words, we are displeased and annoyed; the letter casts reflection upon its writer. In fact, to send such a letter is to do a most discourteous thing. In writing a letter we want to spell our words correctly; also, for the sake of our own reputation, if for nothing else, we want to get our facts straight. If a person does not even take the trouble to do this, he may justly be considered a boor or an ignoramus. It is difficult to maintain a high respect for someone who, in writing letters to us, is consistently careless. When an educated person writes and permits minor inaccuracies to characterize his writing, we are disappointed in him and our respect for him is affected by it.

God has revealed to us his word. What are we to think of him if this word is glutted with little annoying inaccuracies? Why could not the omnipotent and omniscient God have taken the trouble to give us a word that was free from error? The present writer finds it difficult to have much respect for such a God. Does he expect us to worship him? What kind of a God is he if he has given such an untrustworthy word to mankind? And this brings us to the heart of the matter. The Scriptures claim to be breathed forth from his mouth; if they partake of error, must not he himself also partake thereof?

He, of course, tells us that his word is pure. If there are mistakes in that word, however, we know better; it is not pure. If the autographa of Scripture are marred by flecks of mistake, God simply has not told us the truth concerning his word. To assume that he could breathe forth a word that contained mistakes is to say, in effect, that God himself can make mistakes. We must maintain that the original of Scripture is infallible for the simple reason that it came to us directly from God himself.

It does not follow from this that only an errorless text can be of devotional benefit to Christians, nor do those who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture maintain such a position. Thousands have been brought to a knowledge of the truth and have come to know him whom to know aright is life eternal, and they have had no inerrant text. There are those who through the King James Version have come to know Christ and have grown in grace daily, yet the/ King James Version is not inerrant.

Be this as it may, however, the serious student of the Bible will desire to approximate the original in so far as that is possible. We may revert to the illustration of the teacher who had received a letter from the President. When the original was destroyed (shall we say that it is unimportant whether the President of the United States made minor mistakes in his letter?), the teacher had only the copies which the pupils had made. As a result of the ignorance of the children who did the copying, these became imperfect copies. The teacher might have remained satisfied with these imperfect copies. She, however, had great respect for her President. Consequently, she endeavored to the best of her ability to correct each copy so that the exact wording of the original might be restored.

It would be foolish to maintain that because they contained mistakes, the copies were therefore without any value. Anyone could read those copies and learn what the President had written. To obtain the President's message, all one had to do was to read a copy of his letter. So it is with the Bible. The copies of Scripture which are now extant are remarkably accurate, and hence, like the original, they are "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." Minor, indeed, are those errors which may be found in the copies of the Bible which we possess, and through careful, scholarly study they are being in remarkable measure removed. Very different, however, was the original. That was the actual God-breathed Word, true to fact in all its statements. Let no one say that it is a matter of indifference whether this original was inerrant; it is a matter of greatest importance, for the honor and veracity of God himself are at stake. If there are actual errors in the original copies of the Bible, the word which has come forth from the mouth of God is not a perfect word, and the God of truth is guilty of error. If God has spoken falsely in his word, he is not the God of truth, and consequently, the Christian religion is a false religion. This conclusion cannot be evaded. It is for this reason that those who embrace the Biblical doctrine are so zealous to maintain the absolute perfection of the Divine revelation in its original manuscripts.

Thy Word is Truth

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Day 22

THE DIVINE OMNISCIENCE

A. W. TOZER

Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising and art acquainted with all my ways. I can inform Thee of nothing and it is vain to try to hide anything from Thee. In the light of Thy perfect knowledge I would be as artless as a little child. Help me to put away all care, for Thou knowest the way that I take and when Thou hast tried me I shall come forth as gold. Amen.

To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it is more: it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn.

The Scriptures teach that God has never learned from anyone. ”Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counselor has taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to Him the way of understanding?” ”For who has known the mind of the Lord? or who has been His counselor?" These rhetorical questions put by the prophet and the apostle Paul declare that God has never learned.

From there it is only a step to the conclusion that God cannot learn. Could God at any time or in any manner receive into His mind knowledge that He did not possess and had not possessed from eternity, He would be imperfect and less than himself. To think of a God who must sit at the feet of a teacher, even though that teacher be an archangel or a seraph, is to think of someone other than the Most High God, maker of heaven and earth.

This negative approach to the divine omniscience is, I believe, quite justified in the circumstances. Since our intellectual knowledge of God is so small and obscure, we can sometimes gain considerable advantage in our struggle to understand what God is like by the simple expedient of thinking what He is not like. This method of trying to make men see what God is like by showing them what He is not like is used also by the inspired writers in the Holy Scriptures. ”Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard,” cries Isaiah, ”that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?” And that abrupt statement by God Himself, ”I am the Lord, I change not,” tells us more about the divine omniscience than could be told in a ten-thousand word treatise, were all negatives arbitrarily ruled out. God’s eternal truthfulness is stated negatively by the apostle Paul, ”God... cannot lie”; and when the angel asserted that ”with God nothing shall be impossible,” the two negatives add up to a ringing positive.

That God is omniscient is not only taught in the Scriptures, it must be inferred also from all else that is taught concerning Him. God perfectly knows Himself and, being the source and author of all things, it follows that He knows all that can be known. And this He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn.

Because God knows all things perfectly, He knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well. He never discovers anything. He is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything nor (except when drawing men out for their own good) does He seek information or ask questions. God is self-existent and self-contained and knows what no creature can ever know--Himself, perfectly. ”The things of God know no man, but the Spirit of God.” Only the Infinite can know the infinite.

In the divine omniscience we see set forth against each other the terror and fascination of the Godhead. That God knows each person through and through can be a cause of shaking fear to the man that has something to hide--some unforsaken sin, some secret crime committed against man or God. The unblessed soul may well tremble that God knows the flimsiness of every pretext and never accepts the poor excuses given for sinful conduct, since He knows perfectly the real reason for it. ”Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.” How frightful a thing to see the sons of Adam seeking to hide among the trees of another garden. But where shall they hide? ”Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?...If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hides not from thee; but the night shines as the day.”

And to us who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us in the gospel, how unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us, no enemy can make an accusation stick. No forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past. No unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from us, since He knew us utterly before we knew Him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us. ”For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.”

Our Father in heaven knows our frame and remembers that we are dust. He knew our inborn treachery, and for His own sake engaged to save us (Isa. 48:8-11). His only begotten Son, when He walked among us, felt our pains in their naked intensity of anguish. His knowledge of our afflictions and adversities is more than theoretic; it is personal, warm, and compassionate. Whatever may befall us, God knows and cares as no one else can.

The Knowledge of the Holy

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Day 23

THE SPIRIT'S TESTIMONY TO OUR SONSHIP

BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD

"The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God."
Romans 8:16

This is one of the texts of the Bible to which the Christian heart turns with special longing and to which it clings with special delight. On it has been erected the great Protestant doctrine of Assurance--the great doctrine that every Christian man may and should be assured that he is a child of God, that it is possible for him to attain this assurance, and that to seek and find it is accordingly his duty.

What exactly is affirmed is that "the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God." The actuality of the Spirit's testimony to our childship to God is established, then, beyond all cavil. It is entrenched in the same indeclinable authority by which we are assured that there is a Spirit at all and that there is any such thing as an adoption into sonship to God.

It would seem to be equally clear from the text that the testimony of the Spirit is not to be confounded with the testimony of our own consciousness. The "Spirit of God" and "our spirit" are brought into pointed contrast and are emphatically distinguished from one another. We have these words from H. A. W. Meyer: "Paul distinguishes from the subjective self-consciousness, I am the child of God, the accordant testimony of the objective Holy Spirit, You are the child of God." This distinction is the very nerve of the whole statement, the scope of which is nothing other than to give the Christian, along with his human conclusions, also a Divine witness. The whole sense of Paul's declaration is that we have over and beyond our own authority a Divine witness to our childship to God.

It is to be borne in mind, however, that distinctness in the source of this testimony from that of our own consciousness is not the same as separateness from it in its delivery. Paul would seem, indeed, while thus strongly emphasizing its distinct source--namely, the Divine Spirit--nevertheless to suggest its conjunction with the testimony of our own spirit in its actual delivery: "The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit." Distinct in its source, it is yet delivered confluently with the testimony of our human consciousness. To be distinguished from it as something other than, additional to, and more than the testimony of our human consciousness, it is yet not to be separated from it as delivered apart from it, out of connection with it, much less in opposition or contradiction to it. He bears witness with our spirit; that is, with our conscience.

Paul sets forth the testimony of the Holy Spirit as a co-testimony with the witness of our own spirit. It is not intended as a substitute for it. Its object is not to give assurance to a man who has "no signs" that he is a child of God, but to assure him who has "signs" (but is too timid to draw so great an inference from so small a premise) that he is a child of God and to give him thus not merely a human but a Divine basis for his assurance. It is, in a word, not a substitute for the proper evidence of our childship, but a Divine enhancement of that evidence. A man who has none of the marks of a Christian is not entitled to believe himself to be a Christian; only those who are being led by the Spirit of God are children of God. But a man who has all the marks of being a Christian may fall short of his privilege of assurance. It is to such that the witness of the Spirit is superadded, not to take the place of the evidence of "signs," but to enhance their effect and raise it to a higher plane.

What is the mode of delivery of this testimony of the Holy Spirit? The single verse before us does not speak very decisively to the matter. It is necessary to read this verse in its context. How does Paul introduce this great assertion? He had painted in the seventh chapter the dreadful conflict between indwelling sin and the intruded principle of holiness which springs up in every Christian's breast. And he had pointed to the very fact of this conflict as a banner of hope. For he identifies the fact of the conflict with the presence of the Holy Spirit working in the soul; and in the presence of the Holy Spirit is the earnest of victory. The Spirit would not be found in a soul which was not purchased for God and in process of fitting for the heavenly Kingdom. Let no one talk of living on the low plane of the seventh chapter of Romans. Low plane, indeed! It is a low plane where there is no conflict. Where there is conflict--with the Spirit of God as one party in the battle--there is progressive advance toward the perfection of Christian life. So Paul treats it. He points to the conflict as indicative of the presence of the Spirit; he points to the presence of the Spirit as the earnest of victory; and on this experience he founds his promise of eternal bliss. Then comes our passage, introduced with one of his tremendous "therefores." "Accordingly, then, brethren," (since the Holy Spirit is in you and the end is sure), "we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh, but to the Spirit to live after the Spirit. . .For as many as are being led" (notice the progressive present) "by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God, for" (after all), "the spirit that you received was not a spirit of bondage, but a spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father, the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God." "The Spirit Himself" bearing this witness? When? How? Why, of course, in this very cry framed by him in our souls, "Abba, Father!" Not a separate witness, but just this witness and no other. The witness of the Spirit, then, is to be found in his hidden ministrations by which the filial spirit is created in our hearts, and comes to birth in this joyful cry.

The Spirit is the spirit of truth and will not witness that one is a child of God who is not one. But he who really is a child of God will necessarily possess marks and signs of being so. The Spirit makes all these marks and signs valid and leads the heart and mind to this true conclusion. The function of the witness of the Spirit of God is, therefore, to give to our halting conclusions the weight of his Divine certitude. It may be our reasoning by which the conclusion is reached. It is the testimony of the Spirit which gives to a conclusion thus reached indefectible certainty. It is the Spirit alone who is the author, therefore, of the Christian's firm assurance. We have good grounds for believing that we are in Christ apart from his witness. Through his witness these good grounds produce their full effect in our minds and hearts.

Faith & Life

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Day 24

PRAYER

WALTER CHANTRY

"And Asa cried out to the LORD his God, and said, 'LORD, it is nothing for you to help, whether with many or with those who have no power. Help us, O LORD our God, for we rest on you, and in your name we go against this multitude. O LORD, you are our God; do not let man prevail against you!'" (2 Chr. 14:11)

Asa, king of Judah, one day stood in a place where every minister of the gospel has been. As God's people faced vicious enemies, he was their leader. It cannot be said that every instant in the pastorate is filled with fierce conflict; but the moments of respite are more surprising than the battle. The Great Shepherd has sent his sheep to live among wolves. This glorious Sovereign conducts the affairs of his everlasting kingdom in the midst of his enemies. He builds his church in the neighborhood of the gates of hell, recruiting each new member of his body from Satan's precinct.

Assaults are made upon our congregations just as Zerah the Ethiopian attacked Judah. Humanism, materialism, and hedonism have enlisted overwhelming forces to march against a few believers. The church on earth is in a state of war. She is ever engaged in combat.

What pastor would not love to see the forces of unbelief and sin put to flight in our day? It is the desire of every true man of God to deliver decisive blows against the batteries of hell. Our desire is that the Names of our Lord and our Father might be exalted upon earth in fresh victories. Oh, for multitudes to be awed into an awareness that the Most High dwells still in the midst of his people! If only the Almighty would bare his right arm in crushing his and our enemies, making the whole world of evil stagger before his Word!

Ezra, the writer of Chronicles, describes for us the determining factor of the ancient war. His account should captivate every heart in which there burns a holy zeal for the Lord of hosts. There was an enormous clash of arms at Mareshah, but nothing is recorded of the Israelites' skill in handling sword or bow. No doubt Asa and his captains carefully drew up their battle plan. Perhaps an ambush was set for the Ethiopians. Perhaps Zerah was outflanked. But Ezra is silent as to the strategy employed; for it was not the decisive element in the struggle.

The passing over of these aspects of the combat may disappoint some pastors. Ezra frustrates those who have become convinced that all hope of victory lies in our skill in handling our offensive weapons. Their entire attention has been turned toward the academic sharpening of men's swords and to the mastering of precise homiletical skills. Ezra completely exasperates the new cult of methodology. 'How to' experts with new programs and schemes will read Chronicles in vain for tactics.

"I will tell you where the battle was won, where the critical maneuver was performed," says the servant of God who records the smashing victory. So we follow the old priest backward in time to a moment before the actual bloody encounter. The first archer has not yet drawn his bow. But we are moving behind the front lines where historians wait with notepads to record statistics and tactics. We are led to a tent where Ezra lifts the flap. Within is a man, a solitary man, on his face in prayer!

There you have the secret weapon of Judah. When Paul was reviewing the Christian's armor in Ephesians 6, he admired this instrument of spiritual warfare and named it 'all-prayer'. It discharges the most lethal force ever known, rendering atomic weapons insignificant by its side. Every time great exploits have been done by the people of God, this fieldpiece has been rolled out by men of like passions with themselves.

A complete history of this mighty implement of warfare would recall the names of Moses, Elijah, Asa, and Daniel. Topping the roll of honor in its skillful use is our holy Lord Jesus Christ. Since his day it has been manned by the apostles, Luther, Tyndale, Knox, and Edwards. But the list is enormous. By it many an obscure pastor has secured triumphs of great importance to the kingdom of God. Their hours alone with God are yet untold. Even where known men of prayer have brought this secret force into service, their souls' exercises have been too sacred to be revealed in full.

When we review the glorious annals of 'all-prayer', our faces begin to color with shame. Alongside the great warriors who mastered this weapon, we are mere dwarfs. Why are not the forces of unbelief and brazen sin driven back in our generation? Our hearts know that, at least in part, the answer is, "We have not because we ask not" (James 4:2). Our Lord has not retired 'all-prayer' to a museum where it becomes a curious relic of past exploits. It has been given into our hands! Yet we are unskilled in its use. Why do we not use this great weapon which would prove devastating to our enemies? One prominent answer must be that we cringe from the biting self-denial required in prevailing prayer.

Self must be denied as to time and attention for prayer. All-prayer cannot be wielded without the expenditure of time. A minute with God seldom lays hold of him. Sustained prayer is necessary. Such time may only be found by snatching it from personal pursuits, however legitimate they may be.

It is striking that the greatest men of prayer in history have been some of the busiest men in the world. Think of Moses forging a nation from more than two million slaves. Or look at Daniel occupied with affairs of state in Babylon. Think of Luther--professor, Bible translator, pastor, prolific writer--who prayed three hours each day. But the chief example of them all is our Lord Jesus Christ who reserved early morning or late night hours for prayer. If anyone was entitled to relax or seek refreshment, it was our holy Master. But he used his own time to pray. It is not that we are too busy to pray but that the flesh is still too insistent on satisfaction.

Days of fasting and prayer will be set aside from only one part of the calendar--yours! Days of relaxation and recreation must be shortened. Holidays must diminish. Self must be intentionally denied that you might come to your knees. How is it that ministers are too busy to be found in God's courts, but somehow the holidays are fitted in?

Self must be denied as to energy for prayer. There is something desperately arduous about protracted prayer. Even when it is full of delight and blessed nearness to our beloved Lord, it leaves a man drained of strength. David Brainerd jotted notes about prayer in his diary, such as 'extremely weak and overcome'. Recalling strenuous effort in the secret place, a pastor's flesh begins to make many a falsely pious suggestion when the hour of prayer approaches: fascinate the mind with another chapter of theology; rush off to visit a weak Christian; look through periodicals (to keep abreast of the times, of course), visit a loved bookstore! Anything is easier than an earnest conference with the living God. It will sap energy from self to lay hold upon the Lord until he visits your corner of the vineyard with grace and power.

At the moment of prayer, the renunciation of self-confidence is essential. Asa described his army as 'them that have no power'. How common it is for pastors to kneel with a smile in the soul, a smile satisfied with preparations already completed for the pulpit. The illustrations are so plain; doctrinal formulations must be convincing; organization is thorough. Never should less be offered if it is in our power to master a text. But while self-confidence remains, the heavens are brass. Prayers do not penetrate. Only when confidence in self is mortified can we pray.

At the moment of prayer the renunciation of self-interest is essential. Asa's entire concern in the recorded entreaty is the glory of God. Do you commonly pray until your fame, fortune, life and success pale into insignificance? until your soul is consumed with a sense that your Lord's honor is all-important? until you honestly seek only the public display of his glorious majesty?

One of the sorriest creatures in all the world is a preacher who does not pray except in public. Even with the theology of Calvin, the illustrations of Spurgeon, and the searching applications of Edwards, if a pastor has not been alone with God in secret, he is a pitiful figure in the pulpit. Without secret prayer, he is without unction, a lifeless shell. Though ministers may, as other true saints, fall into intervals of prayerlessness, he is no man of God in whom this condition prevails.

Young men entering the ministry have visions of great exploits for the Lord. They should know that men who have been twenty or thirty years in the service of God and his people, once had visions too. True men are stirred with hopes of shaking the world system with 'Thus saith the Lord', hopes of bringing the entire populace of a region under the fear of God, hopes of making the name of Jesus so desirable that he is generally sought after. There is a great gulf between such hopes and reality. Why we have not been the instruments of God's working that we had hoped to be requires no clever analysis--too much public activity with too little secret prayer; failure to master the use of all-prayer.

If a man sets out to excel this generation of ministers, he will find it easier to preach than to pray. In the stern reality of the secret place, a dagger is placed in his hands. Timid men shrink back from using it. When a man will plunge the knife into self-pleasing, self-confidence, and self-interest, and will wrestle alone with God for His glory, the world will see God working openly, and granting victory on the field of battle.

The Shadow of the Cross - Studies in Self-Denial

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Day 25

FAILING IN PRAYER

O. HALLESBY

Why do most of us fail so miserably in prayer? I have pondered this question nearly ever since I, by the grace of God, began to pray.

I think we will all admit, both to ourselves and to others, without any question, that to pray is difficult for all of us. The difficulty lies in the very act of praying. To pray, really to pray, is what is difficult for us. It feels like too much of an effort.

That natural persons feel that prayer is an effort is not strange in the least. They "receive not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto them." Natural persons may, of course, feel a desire to pray at times. They may feel a desire to pray when they are in danger, for instance, or when they are in a religious frame of mind. But they can never become reconciled to daily and regular prayer. They feel that it is unreasonable on the part of God to be so particular about this matter of praying. They give many reasons why they do not pray quite as many prayers as most pastors and preachers demand of them. They say to themselves: "The Lord certainly does not expect people who are well and strong and able to work to spend so much valuable time in prayer. Especially in these modern times when everybody is so busy."

Natural persons look upon prayer as a burdensome task. Most unspiritual people never assume this burden. Some do, however, and pray to God a little each day. But they feel that it is a heavy requirement, and they do so only because they think that our Lord is strict in regard to this and insists that it be done. That this is the natural person's view of prayer does not surprise us.

It cannot help but surprise us, however, when we find that this view is prevalent also among believing Christians, at least among many of us. At conversion we were led into a life of earnest, diligent prayer. Our seasons of prayer were the happiest time of the day. But after a longer or a shorter period of time, we began to encounter difficulties in our prayer life. Prayer became a burden, an effort. As honest souls we clung diligently and faithfully to prayer, but often we had to compel ourselves to enter into our secret chambers. Prayer, which was once the free, happy, grateful communion of a redeemed soul with God, had begun to become a matter of duty, which we performed more or less punctiliously according to our character and the willpower we had.

The more of an effort prayer becomes, the more easily it is neglected. Results which are fatal to spiritual life follow, not immediately, but no less certainly. First, our minds become worldly, and we feel more and more alienated from God, and therefore have less and less about which to speak with Him. Then we develop an unwilling spirit, which always finds pretexts for not praying and excuses for having neglected prayer. Our inner life begins to weaken. The pain of living in sin is not felt as keenly as before, because sin is no longer honestly confessed before God. As a result of this, our spiritual vision becomes blurred, and we can no longer distinguish clearly between that which is sin and that which is not. From now on we resist sin in essentially the same way as worldly people do. They struggle against those sins only which are exceedingly dangerous from the standpoint of their consequences.

But such people have no desire to lose their reputation as Christians. For this reason they try to hide the worldliness of their minds as long as possible. In conversation, as well as in the prayer meeting, they are tempted to use language which is not in harmony with their inner selves. Empty words and affectation now seek to strangle what little prayer life is left in their hearts.

All this and a great deal more is the result of an impaired prayer life. And this is just what has taken place in the lives of many believers.

Prayer

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Day 26

WRESTING IN PRAYER

O. HALLESBY

"Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation."
Mark 14:38

Most of us cannot quite understand how prayer can involve difficulty and anguish. Why should praying entail so much suffering? Why should our prayer life be a constantly flowing source of anguish?

If we will reflect but for a moment, we will, however, see that it really cannot be otherwise. If prayer is the central function of the new life of faith, the very heartbeat of our life in God, it is obvious that our prayer life must become the target against which Satan directs his best and most numerous darts. He understands better than we do what prayer means to ourselves and to others. That is why his chief attack is directed against our prayer life. If he can in one way or another weaken it, his prospects of stealing our life in God without us even noticing it are of the very best.

This is not only the most painless way of stealing from us our spiritual life, it is also the quietest way--the way which creates the least sensation. Satan desires above all to provide himself with servants who think that they are God's children and who are even looked upon as children of God by others. For this reason, Satan mobilizes everything that he can commandeer in order to hinder our prayer. He has an excellent confederate in our own bosom: our old Adam. Our carnal nature is, according to the Scriptures and our own bitter experience, enmity against God. It realizes that it can expect nothing but mortification every time we really approach God in prayer.

It is important for us to bear this clearly in mind. By so doing, we will, in the first place, be able to account for something which we formerly could not understand, namely, the aversion to prayer which we feel more or less strongly from time to time. Our disinclination to pray should not make us anxious or bewildered. It should merely substantiate to us the old truth that the "flesh lusts against the spirit." We shall have our carnal natures with us as long as we live here below, and we must endure the discomfort occasioned thereby.

We should deal with the unwillingness of our flesh in this respect in the same way as we deal with all the other sinful desires of our flesh. We should take it to God and lay it all before Him. And the blood of Jesus Christ will cleanse us from this sin as it does from all others.

The first and the decisive battle in connection with prayer is the conflict which arises when we are to make arrangements to be alone with God every day. If the battle is lost for any length of time at this point, the enemy has already won the first skirmish. But even though we do gain the victory at the threshold of our prayer chamber, our prayer-struggle is by no means over. Our enemies will pursue us deliberately into our very prayer rooms. And here our carnal natures and Satan will take up the battle anew, though from a somewhat different angle. Our carnal natures will be just as afraid of meeting God now as before we went into our prayer room. Now every effort will be concentrated upon making our prayer session as brief as possible, or upon distracting us so completely that we are not even now given an opportunity to be alone with God.

My friend, do you know anything about this battle? As you kneel to speak with your Lord, it seems as though everything you have to do appears vividly before your's mind's eye. You see especially how much there is to do, and how urgent it is that it be done, at least some of it. As these thoughts occur, you become more and more restless. You try to keep your thoughts collected and to speak with God, but you succeed only for a moment now and then. Your prayer hour becomes really the most restless hour of the day. To put it plainly, you feel as though the time you are spending on your knees is just that much time wasted. Then you stop praying. The enemy has won a very neat victory!

Here is where we are face to face with enemies who are vastly superior to us. And they will defeat us every time if we do not learn the true secret of prayer: to open our hearts to Jesus and give Him access to our needs. Prayer is for the helpless. Helplessness is not a hindrance, but an incentive to prayer. Our helplessness in connection with our restless thoughts and distracted minds will not be a hindrance to prayer when the Spirit has succeeded in teaching us the little, but important secret of prayer, that my helplessness is Jesus knocking at my heart's door desiring to enter in and employ His power to relieve my distress. He has power over my restless thoughts. He can rebuke the storm in my soul and still its raging waters.

The only way in which we can gather and keep collected our distracted minds and our roaming thoughts is to center them about Jesus Christ. By that I mean that we should let Christ lay hold of, attract, captivate and gather about Himself all our interests. Then our sessions of prayer will become real meetings with God. "And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus."

I shall find no rest and peace in prayer as long as I think that I, by the concentration of my own will, can keep my thoughts on God. But as soon as I realize that I am helpless, then the peace of God will descend with healing and blessing upon my distracted soul.

Prayer

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Day 27

THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER

O. HALLESBY

From the very beginning we approach prayer with a grave misconception. Our selfishness knows no bounds. We look upon Him as another means of gaining our own ends. We have a carnal nature, and when it can gain some advantage or be delivered from some great suffering or misfortune, it has no objections whatever to praying. On the contrary, then it, too, manifests a desire to pray which is nothing short of wonderful!

We should note well that the temptation to misuse prayer is native to us and comes, therefore, automatically to every believer. The sons of Zebedee came with their mother to Jesus one day and asked for the highest places of honor in the earthly kingdom which was about to be established, as they thought. Their prayer was no doubt offered in all innocence and good faith. They were cousins of Jesus and had, together with Peter, already been given positions of preference in the intimate circle of Jesus' friends. When the other apostles heard what the two had done, they became indignant.

But Jesus reacted in an entirely different way. He took very kindly and understandingly to the whole affair. He advised them of their fault and explained everything to them. Such a tender and fervent tone runs though the whole admonition and warms our very souls. It tells us what Jesus' attitude is toward us when we come by families into His presence and ask Him to favor us in every possible way and avert from us all danger and all unpleasantness. He does not become angry with us as we might expect. He understands us, advises us of our mistakes, and tells us how we should pray.

This is what the Spirit of prayer undertakes to do every time we misuse prayer and ask for things for ourselves, for our own enjoyment. Lovingly and kindly, but firmly, He reminds us that this is not in accordance with the true meaning of prayer. He shows us that this is to pray amiss, and points out our mistakes.

The purpose of prayer is to glorify the name of God. Prayer life has its own laws, as all the rest of life has. The fundamental law in prayer is this: Prayer is given and ordained for the purpose of glorifying God. Prayer is the appointed way of giving Jesus an opportunity to exercise His supernatural powers of salvation. And in so doing, He desires to make use of us. Through prayer we should give Jesus the opportunity of gaining access to our souls, our bodies, our homes, our neighborhoods, our countries, to the whole world, to the fellowship of believers, and to the unsaved. If we will make use of prayer, not to wrest from God advantages for ourselves or our dear ones, or to escape from tribulations and difficulties, but to call down upon ourselves and others those things which will glorify the name of God, then we shall see the strongest and boldest promises of the Bible about prayer fulfilled in our weak, little prayer life. Then we shall see such answers to prayer as we had never thought were possible.

It is written, "And this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we ask of him." The apostle establishes the fact from his own prayer experience as well as that of his readers, that if we pray for anything according to the will of God, we already have what we pray for the moment we ask it. It is immediately sent from heaven on its way to us. We do not know exactly when it will arrive while we are asking for it, but those who have learned to know God through the Spirit of God have learned to leave this in His hands, and to live just as happily whether the answer arrives immediately or later.

By this time no doubt some of my sincere praying readers are feeling depressed. After what has been said so far, you are beginning to suspect that you have misunderstood and misused the sacred privilege of prayer altogether. You have in your daily prayer life been speaking with God about everything, greater as well as lesser things. You have even asked Him for most insignificant things. You are afraid that this is a misuse of prayer and that you should therefore cease at once.

No, my friend, you should by no means cease. On the contrary, you should pray God for still greater simplicity of mind in your daily conversation with Him. Pray that you may become so confidential with Him that you can speak with Him about everything in your daily life. That is what He desires. "In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God."

God knows that it is in our daily lives that we most easily become anxious. He knows that our daily lives are made up of little things, not great things. Therefore, whether you pray for big things or little, say to God, "If it will glorify Thy name, then grant my prayer and help me. But if it will not glorify Thy name, then let me remain in my predicament, and give me power to glorify Thy name in the situation in which I find myself." Only by praying in this way will we succeed in opening our hearts to Jesus. This will give Him the opportunity to exercise His power on our behalf, not only as He wills but also when He wills.

Prayer

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Day 28

EFFECTUAL PRAYER
(Part 1)

CHARLES SPURGEON

"Oh, that I knew where I might find him! That I might come even to his seat!
I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments."
Job 23:3,4

In Job's uttermost extremity he cried after the Lord. The longing desire of an afflicted child of God is once more to see his Father's face. Job's first prayer is not, "Oh that I might be healed of the disease which now festers in every part of my body!" nor even, "Oh that I might see my children restored from the jaws of the grave and my property once more brought from the hand of the spoiler!" The first and uppermost cry is, "Oh that I knew where I might find HIM--who is my God, that I might come even to his seat!" God's children run home when the storm comes on. It is the heaven-born instinct of a gracious soul to seek shelter from all ills beneath the wings of Jehovah. "He that has made his refuge God," might serve as the title of a true believer. A hypocrite, when he feels that he has been afflicted by God, resents the affliction, and, like a slave, would run from the master who has scourged him; but not so the true heir of heaven. He kisses the hand that smote him and seeks shelter from the rod in the bosom of that very God who frowned upon him.

It appears that Job's end in desiring the presence of God was that he might pray to him. He had prayed, but he wanted to pray as in God's presence. He desired to plead as before one whom he knew would hear and help him. He longed to state his own case before the seat of the impartial Judge, before the very face of the all-wise God. He would appeal from the lower courts, where his friends had judged unrighteously, to the High Court of heaven. There, said Job, "I would order my cause before him and fill my mouth with arguments."

Job teaches us how he meant to plead and intercede with God. He does, as it were, reveal the secrets of his closet and unveils the art of prayer. We are admitted into the guild of suppliants; we are shown the art and mystery of pleading; we have taught to us the blessed handicraft and science of prayer.

There are two things here set forth as necessary in prayer--ordering of our cause, and filling our mouth with arguments.

First, it is needful that our suit be ordered before God. There is a vulgar notion that prayer is a very easy thing, a kind of common business that may be done anyhow, without care or effort. Some think that you have only to pull a book down from the shelf and get through a certain number of very excellent words and you have prayed, and then you may put the book up again. Others suppose that to use a book is superstitious, and that you ought rather to repeat extemporaneous sentences, sentences which come to your mind with a rush, like a herd of swine or a pack of hounds, and that when you have uttered them with some little attention to what you have said, you have prayed. Now neither of these modes of prayer were adopted by ancient saints. They appear to have thought a great deal more seriously of prayer than many do today.

The ancient saints were wont, with Job, to order their cause before God, that is, in the manner of a petitioner coming into Court. A petitioner does not come into court unprepared--stating his case on the spur of the moment--but enters into the audience chamber with his suit well prepared, having moreover learned how he ought to behave himself in the presence of the great One to whom he is appealing. There are times, when in peril and distress, that we may fly to God just as we are, as the dove enters the cleft of the rock even though her plumes are ruffled. But in ordinary times, we should not come with an unprepared spirit. See yonder priest? He has a sacrifice to offer. But he does not rush into the court of the priests and hack at the bullock with the first ax upon which he can lay his hand. He washes his feet at the brazen laver, puts on his garments, adorns himself with his priestly vestments, and then he comes to the altar with his victim properly divided according to the law. He is careful to do according to the command and takes the blood in a bowl and pours it in an appropriate place at the foot of the altar, not throwing it any which way. He does not kindle the fire with a common flame but with the sacred fire from off the altar. Now this ritual is all superseded, but the truth which it taught remains the same: our spiritual sacrifices should be offered with holy carefulness. God forbid that our prayer should be a mere leaping out of one's bed and kneeling down and saying anything that comes first to mind. On the contrary, may we wait upon the Lord with holy fear and sacred awe.

If any ask what order should be observed in prayer, I am not about to give you a scheme such as many have drawn out in which adoration, confession, petition, intercession, and ascription are arranged in succession. I am not persuaded that any such order is of divine authority. The true spiritual order of prayer seems to me to consist in something more than mere arrangement. It is most fitting for us first to feel that we are now doing something that is real; that we are about to address ourselves to God whom we cannot see, but who is really present. Feeling the reality of God's presence, our mind will be led by divine grace into a humble state. Consequently, we shall not deliver ourselves of our prayer as boys repeating their lessons, as a mere matter of rote; much less shall we speak as if we were rabbis instructing our pupils, or as I have heard some do, with the coarseness of a highwayman stopping a person on the road and demanding his money. On the contrary, we shall be humble yet bold petitioners, humbly importuning mercy through the Savior's blood.

When I feel that I am in the presence of God and take my rightful position in that presence, the next thing I shall want to recognize will be that I have no right to what I am seeking, and cannot expect to obtain it except as a gift of grace, and I must recollect that God limits the channel through which He will give me mercy--he will give it to me through his dear Son. Let me put myself then under the patronage of the great Redeemer. Let me feel that now it is no longer I that speak but Christ who speaks with me, and that while I plead, I plead his wounds, his life, his death, his blood, himself.

The next thing is to consider what I am to ask for. It is most proper in prayer to aim at great distinctness in supplication. It is well not to beat around the bush in prayer but to come directly to the point. I like that prayer of Abraham's, "Oh that Ishmael might live before thee!" There is the name of the person prayed for and the blessing desired, all in a few words. Many persons would have used a roundabout expression of this kind: "Oh that our beloved offspring might be regarded with the favor which thou bearest to those who," etc. Some people cannot even pray for the minister without using such circular descriptives that you might think it were someone whom it did not do to mention too particularly. Why not be distinct and say what we mean as well as mean what we say? It is not necessary, my dear brethren, to ask for every supposable good thing; it is not necessary to rehearse the catalog of every desire you may have, have had, can have, or shall have. Ask for what you now need, and, as a rule, keep to present need. Ask for it plainly, as before God, who does not regard your fine expressions and to whom your eloquence and oratory will be less than nothing and vanity. You are before the Lord; let your words be few but let your heart be fervent.

You have not quite completed the ordering when you have asked for what you want through Jesus Christ. There should be a searching as to whether it is assuredly a fitting thing to ask, for some prayers would never be offered if men did but think. A little reflection would show us that some things which we desire were better let alone. We may, moreover, have a motive at the bottom of our desire which is not Christ-like, a selfish motive which forgets God's glory and caters only for our own ease and comfort. Now although we may ask for things which are for our profit, yet still we must never let our profit interfere in any way with the glory of God. There must be mingled with acceptable prayer the holy salt of submission to the divine will. When we are sure that what we ask for is for God's glory, then, if we have power in prayer, we may say, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me."

Still, prayer itself is an art which only the Holy Ghost can teach us. He is the giver of all prayer. Pray for prayer; pray till you can pray and don't give up praying because you cannot pray. It is when you think that you cannot pray that you are most praying, and sometimes when you have no sort of comfort in your supplications, it is then that your heart, all broken and cast down, is really wrestling and truly prevailing with the Most High.

12 Sermons on Prayer

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Day 29

EFFECTUAL PRAYER
(Part II)

CHARLES SPURGEON

The second part of prayer is filling the mouth with arguments, not with words or good phrases or pretty expressions. When we come to the gate of mercy, forcible arguments are the knocks of the rapper by which the gate is opened.

Why are arguments to be used at all? is the first question. The answer is not because God is slow to give or because we can change the divine purpose or because he needs to be informed of our circumstances. The arguments to be used are for our own benefit, not for his. He requires us to plead with him and to bring forth our strong reasons because this will show that we feel the value of the mercy. When a man searches for arguments for a thing, it is because he attaches importance to that which he is seeking.

My brethren, there is no need for prayer at all as far as God is concerned, but what a need there is for it on our own account! If we were not constrained to pray, I question whether we could even live as Christians. If God's mercies came to us unasked, they would not be half so useful as they now are when they have to be sought for. The very act of praying is a blessing. To pray is, as it were, to bathe oneself in a cooling stream, to mount on eagle's wings above the clouds, to enter the treasure house of God. To pray is to grasp heaven in one's arms, to embrace the Deity within one's soul. To pray is to cast off your burdens, to tear away your rags, to shake off your diseases and to be filled with spiritual vigor. It is to reach the highest point of Christian health.

The most interesting part of our subject remains: a rapid summary and catalog of a few of the arguments which have been used with great success with God.

It is well in prayer to plead with Jehovah his attributes. Abraham did so when he laid hold upon God's justice when he pleaded for Sodom. "That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Here the wrestling begins. It was a powerful argument by which Abraham grasped the Lord's left hand and arrested it just when the thunderbolt was about to fall. But there came a reply to it. It was intimated to him that this would not spare the city, and you notice how the good man, when sorely pressed, retreated by inches; and at last, when he could no longer lay hold upon justice, he grasped God's right hand of mercy, and that gave him a wondrous hold when he asked that if there were but ten righteous there the city might be spared. So you and I may take hold at any time upon the justice, the mercy, the faithfulness, the wisdom, the long-suffering, the tenderness of God, and we shall find every attribute of the Most High to be, as it were, a great battering ram with which we may open the gates of heaven.

Another mighty piece of ordnance in the battle of prayer is God's promise. When Jacob was on the other side of the brook Jabbok and his brother Esau was coming with armed men, he pleaded with God not to suffer Esau to destroy the mother and the children. As a master reason he pleaded, "And thou said, Surely I will do thee good." Oh the force of that plea! He was holding God to his word, "Thou said."

A third argument to be used is that employed by Moses--the great name of God. How mightily did he argue with God on one occasion upon this ground! "What will thou do for thy great name? The Egyptians will say, Because the Lord could not bring them into the land, therefore he slew them in the wilderness." Now, if the Lord should not be as good as his promise, not only is the believer deceived, but the wicked world looking on would say, "Aha! Where is your God?"

We may also plead the sorrows of his people. This is frequently done. Jeremiah is the great master of this art. "The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!" He talks of all their griefs and trials in the siege. He calls upon the Lord to look upon his suffering Zion, and ere long his plaintive cries are heard.

It is good to plead with God the past. David prays, "Thou hast been my help. Leave me not, neither forsake me." Moses also, speaking with God, says, "Thou did bring this people up out of Egypt." As if he would say, "Do not leave thy work unfinished."

Lastly, the grand Christian argument is the suffering, the death, the merit, the intercession of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I am afraid we do not understand what it is that we have at our command when we are allowed to plead with God for Christ's sake. When we ask God to hear us, pleading Christ's name, we usually mean, "O Lord, thy dear son deserves this of thee; do this unto me because of what he merits." But we might go farther. Supposing you should say to me, you who keep a warehouse in the city, "Sir, call at my office and use my name, and say that they are to give you such a thing." I should go in and use your name and obtain my request as a matter of right and a matter of necessity.

This is virtually what Jesus Christ says to us. "If you need anything of God, all that the Father has belongs to me; go and use my name." When you have Christ's name, to whom the very justice of God has become a debtor and whose merits have claims with the Most High, there is no need to speak with fear and trembling and bated breath. Oh waver not and let not faith stagger. The name of Christ which you plead shakes the gates of hell!

The man who has his mouth full of arguments in prayer shall soon have his mouth full of benedictions in answer to prayer. It is said--I know not how truly--that the explanation of the text, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it," may be found in a very singular Oriental custom. It is said that not many years ago (I remember the circumstance being reported) the King of Persia ordered the chief of his nobility, who had done something which greatly gratified him, to open his mouth. And when he had done so, he began to put into his mouth pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds until he had filled it as full as it could hold. Then he bade him go his way. This is said to have been occasionally done in Oriental courts toward great favorites. God says, "Open thy mouth with arguments," and then he will fill it with mercies priceless, gems unspeakably valuable. Would not a man open his mouth wide to have it filled in such a style? Surely the most simple-minded among you would be wise enough for that. Let us then open wide our mouths when we have to plead with God. Our needs are great, let our requests be great, and the supply shall be great too.

12 Sermons on Prayer

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Day 30

THE GRACE OF GOD

JOHN MURRAY

The term 'grace' has various shades of meaning in Scripture. When it speaks of the grace of God, what is in view most frequently is the favor of God. It is not always unmerited favor. Of Jesus it is said that "he increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." But, generally, sinful men are in view as the objects of God's favor, and then it is always unmerited favor. This is brought out very clearly when we read, "Now to him that works is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt." Grace is here placed in sharp contrast with what is earned and therefore with all merit. Grace is undeserved favor, and if any constraint is placed upon God, arising from worthiness on our part, whether it be of thought or word or action, then it is no longer grace.

We cannot think of sinners as merely undeserving; they are also ill-deserving. The grace of God to sinners is, therefore, not simply unmerited favor, it is also favor shown to the ill-deserving, indeed to the hell-deserving. When Paul says in Romans 3:24, "justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," the grace in view must be understood on the background of the judgment of God referred to in verse 19--"that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." It is guilty men, and therefore hell-deserving men, that the justifying grace of God contemplates.

The grace of God comes to its richest expression in redemption and salvation. How plainly this is set forth in Paul's well-known word, "By grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." It may be easy to give formal assent to this text. Every evangelical Christian will do so. But how ready we are to shy away from its implications! In reality, we deny the truth here asserted when we introduce at any point in the whole span and process of salvation a decisive autonomy on the part of man. If salvation at any point is contingent upon some contribution which man himself makes, then at that point it is of ourselves, and to that extent it is not of grace. Paul's definition "and that not of yourselves" is thereby effaced and the true nature of grace is denied.

The marvel of God's grace is preeminently displayed in the cross of Christ. It was by the will of the Father that he was given and sent. It was by his own will that Christ came. He was sent to save and he came to save. The only alternative was that the whole human race should perish. Jesus alone is the captain of salvation. No one but he wrought redemption, no one but he made expiation, propitiation, and reconciliation for sin. How blasphemous would be the thought that we men had any part in this grand accomplishment! "Now once in the end of the world has he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." It is as we view the solitary uniqueness of Christ's cross, the magnitude of the grace it exhibits, and its complete effectiveness unto salvation that we learn the riches of God's grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

The span of salvation has its origin in election before the foundation of the world. And election is of grace. Too often Christians have sought to intrude human decision as the explanation of the distinction which election requires. God elects, it is said, those whom he foresees will believe, and thus man's choice determines God's choice. If this is the true account of election, then we should have to say that what we ourselves decide determines election. In that event Ephesians 2:8 cannot apply to election, for here Paul says "and that not of yourselves." If election is of grace (Rom. 11:5), it must be of the same grace defined in Ephesians 2:8, and therefore in no respect of ourselves, but wholly the gift of God. Besides, it is salvation by grace through faith that is the gift of God, and so faith itself is of grace and not something that resides in human autonomy. The faith which God foresees is the fruit and not the root of electing grace.

Grace demands humility, the humility that constrains us to be willing debtors all along the line of salvation, from its fount in election to its consummation in glory. Salvation is of the Lord, and it is only of him if it is all of him. This is the doctrine of grace and it is its glory.

Collected Writings of John Murray Vol. 1

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