Feb 13
5
Both our teacher and our lesson!
(Charles Spurgeon)
“He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures — the things concerning Himself.” Luke 24:27
The two disciples on the road to Emmaus had a most profitable journey. Their companion was the best of teachers — in whom is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
This unrivaled tutor used as His class-book, the best of books. He showed us that the surest road to wisdom is not speculation, reasoning, or reading human books — but meditation upon the Word of God. The readiest way to be spiritually rich in heavenly knowledge, is to dig in this mine of diamonds, to gather pearls from this heavenly sea! When Jesus Himself sought to enrich others — He wrought in the quarry of Holy Scripture.
The favored pair were led to consider the best of subjects — for Jesus spoke of Jesus, and expounded the things concerning Himself! Here the diamond cut the diamond, and what could be more admirable? The Master of the House unlocked His own doors, conducted the guests to His table, and placed His own dainties upon it! He who hid the treasure in the field — Himself guided the searchers to it. Our Lord would naturally discourse upon the sweetest of topics — and He could find none sweeter than His own person and work.
With an eye to these things — we should always search the Word. O for grace to study the Bible with Jesus as both our teacher and our lesson!
—
THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD
“Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens; your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.” Psalm 36:5
It has been well said, that “the universe around is a parable of grace.” “Just as the mountains surround and protect Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds and protects his people, both now and forever.” But more stable than even these types of immutability in the kingdom of nature, is the word of a Covenant-keeping God in the kingdom of grace. These mountains (nature’s best emblems of steadfastness) may depart, and the hills be removed, “but,” says their almighty Maker, “my kindness shall not be taken from you!” We can look upwards to the stars of night, and see the “faithfulness” of God “established” in the material heavens- “They continue, to this day, according to Your plans; for all are Your servants.” But these are feeble types and symbols of brighter constellations in the spiritual firmament- the declarations of an unchanging God- “Your word is forever settled in heaven!”
What a gracious assurance amid our own unfaithfulness, “The Lord is faithful!”- that the unfaithfulness of the believer never alters, and can never alter– the faithfulness of God. My soul, anchor yourself on this rock of the Divine veracity. Take hold of that blessed parenthesis which has been, to many a tossed soul, as a polar star in its nights of darkness- “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” He loves them in life- loves them in death- loves them through death- loves them into glory!
Are you not at this hour a monument of God’s faithfulness? Where would you have been, had not the magnet of His grace kept you, and drawn your fugitive affections towards Himself? From how many temptations has He rescued you- laying hold of you on the precipice, when about to plunge headlong down; employing, sometimes constraining grace, at other times, restraining grace- making this your brief history– “Kept by the power of God,” and overruling all- ALL for His own glory, and your own good?
I love to think of Your faithfulness, O “Tried stone,” “laid in Zion.” You were tried by the Law- by Justice- by the fierce assaults and temptations of Satan- by the mockings and revilings and cruelties of wicked men; and yet You remain faithful! You have been tried in another sense by Prophets and Apostles; by Martyrs and Saints; by youthful sinners, and aged sinners, and dying sinners- and You have been found “faithful,” by all and to all; and You are faithful still!
Reader, never suppose, amid the faithlessness of earth’s trusted friends, that you are doomed to thread your way in loneliness and solitude. There is more than one ‘Emmaus journey’. The “abiding” Friend is still here! He is always the same. “He faints not, neither is weary!” His faithfulness is a tried faithfulness. His word is a tried word. His friendship is a tried friendship. He is always better than His word. He pays ‘with interest’!
“Oh! who could bear life’s stormy doom,
Did not Your word of love
Come brightly bearing through the gloom
A peace-branch from above!
Then sorrow touched by You, grows bright,
With more than rapture’s ray,
As darkness shows us worlds of light
We never saw by day!”
When I think that at this very moment the eye of that faithful Savior God is upon me– “I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Psalm 4:8
—
THE HOSPICE OF TRUST
“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
“What I do you know not now; but you shall know hereafter.” John 13:7
Most gracious Refuge, specially built on the Hill Difficulty, designed for Faint-hearts and Feeble-minds–weary ones, in their nights of toil and darkness. This saying of the Savior can be condensed in two words, “Trust Me.”
There is much in life’s pilgrimage and its complexities which must be left to faith, and much that is baffling to sight; much demanding the surrender of our own wills and the merging of them in a Higher. “All these things are against me,” said the stricken patriarch. He lived to cancel and reverse this impeachment of the divine faithfulness, and to recognize the love and mindfulness which in an impatient moment he had disowned.
The great apostle of an after age descried the kindling fires of persecution. Too surely anticipating the battles of the faith, he could see little with the eye of sense save conflict and suffering. But faith takes him within the Gospel Hospice. Amid present insecurity, it whispers of nobler things in reversion. Faith puts into his lips this song in the night, “We know that all things work together for good.” He trusted his Lord’s “hereafter” promise, and he lived to make this entry in the diary of his own personal experience, “The things which have happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel.”
It is for us to honor God by implicit reliance on His word.
“You may not see that all is good–
The bow is broken in its strength;
But what is now misunderstood
Will have its ‘wherefore’ solved at length.”
“Providence,” says Flavel, “is like a curious piece of tapestry, made up of a thousand shreds, which, single, we know not what to make of, but put together and stitched up orderly, they represent to the eye a beautiful history.”
“His plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold.
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart;
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.”
When the pillar-cloud, as with Israel of old, conducts, not by the short and easy way to Canaan, but by the circuitous route and through the depths of the sea, it is for us to offer no remonstrance, but, with unmurmuring submission and unreasoning faith, to hear the directing Voice, the “marching orders”–“Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.” The Savior’s promise will be abundantly ratified “beyond the flood.” But even in this world it is partially fulfilled.
Not a few can endorse the Psalmist’s averment, “They went through the flood on foot; there [in the very pathway of trial] did we rejoice in HIM.” And if not at the time of chastening and affliction, “yet nevertheless afterward” the need-be is often unfolded, the peaceable fruits of righteousness are yielded and made manifest. But for the diverse sorrows of David, and of the subsequent Babylon minstrels, the best and most affecting portions of the Psalter would have been lost to us.
The eyes of the pilgrim disciples on the way to Emmaus were “closed, so that they knew Him not.” Their hopes had suddenly undergone a great eclipse. The “Sun of their soul” had set in darkness. Tears of blissful communion were a memory–no more. They gazed on the cloud, but there was no trace of the rainbow. They could but echo the dirge wailed by others, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.” But in due time He revealed Himself–“Their eyes were opened, and they knew Him.” Hastening to the upper room in Jerusalem, they joined in the briefest but gladdest of songs which thrilled on the lips of those there assembled, “The Lord is risen indeed!” (Luke 24:34.) The Divine dealing is often not at once but gradually explained. The clouds of mid-day and afternoon slowly but surely take on their crimson and silver linings in the western sky.
“You noble few, who here unbending stand
Beneath life’s pressure! yet bear up awhile,
And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deemed evil, is no more;
The storms of wintry time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded spring encircle all.”
“And it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light.”
“This is the resting place, let the weary rest. This is the place of repose.” Isaiah 28:12. John MacDuff.
—
The Living Dead
Tommy Robbins
That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Romans 5:21 – 6:2
As sin and death reigns in the unregenerate, grace reigns in those who live in Christ. Not to minimize the importance of the believer’s conversation in this world which would honor Christ and His gospel, the text and context of the verses before us speak of the efficacious work of God the Spirit in His gracious persevering, preserving presence in His people. It is not we that reign over our sin, it is the grace of God by the righteousness of Christ in us that reigns over sin. Although we are very much aware of our sin, we are dead to sin because we are alive in Christ. We do not live in sin, we live in Christ – “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” Col 3:3. The Holy Spirit is confirming to us the impossibility of living in Christ and living in sin at the same time – “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”. He is also answering the sarcastic argument many try to make against the grace of God – “Shall we sin more that the grace of God will abound more?” He says, “God forbid!”. The life of a child of God is a mystery to the world (and somewhat a mystery to us because we still live in this body of death). The difference is, we simply believe what God says and we “reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” Romans 6:11. We reckon that’s the way it is because that’s the way God reckons it is. The child of God is alive and dead at the same time. Some day soon we shall lose the dead and there will only remain the life, that eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. I speak to the dead because it is only the dead that can hear – “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” John 5:25