Days of Heaven Upon Earth Part 45

OCTOBER 26.

"Go out into the highways and compel them to come in" (Luke xiv. 23).

In the great parable in the fourteenth chapter of Luke, giving an account of the great supper an ancient lord prepared for his friends and neighbors, and to which, when they asked to be excused, he invited the halt and the lame from the city slums and the lepers from outside the gate, there is a significant picture and object lesson of the program of Christianity in this age.

In the first place, it is obvious to every thoughtful mind that the Master is beginning to excuse the Gospel-hardened people of Christian countries.

It is getting constantly more difficult to interest the unsaved of our own land, especially those that have been accustomed to hear the Gospel and the things of Christ. They have asked to be excused from the Gospel feast, and the Lord is excusing them.

At the same time, two remarkable movements indicated in the parable are becoming more and more manifest in our time. One is the Gospel for the slums and the neglected cla.s.ses at home; the other is the Gospel for the heathen or the neglected cla.s.ses abroad.

OCTOBER 27.

"Behold, I am the Lord, the G.o.d of all flesh; is there anything too hard for Me?" (Jer. x.x.xii. 27.)

Cyrus, the King, was compelled to fulfil the vision of Jeremiah, by making a decree, the instant the prophecy had foretold, declaring that Jehovah had bidden him rebuild Jerusalem and invite her captives to return to their native home. So Jeremiah's faith was vindicated and Jehovah's prophecy gloriously fulfilled, as faith ever will be honored. Oh, for the faith, that in the dark present and the darker future, shall dare to subscribe the evidences and seal up the doc.u.ments if need be, for the time of waiting, and then begin to testify to the certainty of its hope like the prophet of Anathoth!

The word Anathoth has a beautiful meaning, "echoes." So faith is the "echo" of G.o.d and G.o.d always gives the "echo" to faith, as He answers it back in glorious fulfilment. Oh, let our faith echo also the brave claim of the ancient prophet and take our full inheritance, with his glorious shout, "Oh, Lord, Thou art the G.o.d of all flesh, is there anything too hard for the Lord?" and back like an echo will come the heavenly answer to our heart, "I am the G.o.d of all flesh, is there anything too hard for Me?"

OCTOBER 28.

"Thou good servant, because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities" (Luke xix. 17).

It is not our success in service that counts, but our fidelity. Caleb and Joshua were faithful and G.o.d remembered it when the day of visitation came. It was a very difficult and unpopular position, and all of us are called in the crisis of our lives to stand alone and in this very matter of trusting G.o.d for victory over sin and our full inheritance in Christ we have all to be tested as they.

Our brethren even in the church of G.o.d, while admitting in the abstract the loveliness and advantages of such an ideal life, tell us as they told Israel that it is impracticable and impossible, and many of us have to stand alone for years witnessing to the power of Christ to save His people to the uttermost and like Caleb following Him wholly, if alone. But this is the real victory of faith and the proof of our uncompromising fidelity.

Let us not therefore complain when we suffer reproach for our testimony or stand alone for G.o.d, but thank Him that He so honors us, and so stand the test that He can afterwards use us when the mult.i.tudes are glad to follow.

OCTOBER 29.

"Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you" (John xvi. 23).

Two men go to the bank cas.h.i.+er, both holding in their hands a piece of paper. One is dressed in expensive style, and presents a gloved and jeweled hand; the other is a rough, unwashed workman. The first is rejected with a polite sentence, and the second receives a thousand dollars over the counter. What is the difference? The one presented a worthless name; the other handed in a note endorsed by the president of the bank. And so the most virtuous moralist will be turned away from the gates of mercy, and the vilest sinner welcomed in if he presents the name of Jesus.

What shall we give to infinite purity and righteousness? Jesus! No other gift is worthy for G.o.d to receive. And He has given Him to us for this very end, to give back as our subst.i.tute and satisfaction. And He has "testified" of this gift what He has of no other, namely, that in Him He is well pleased and all who receive Him "are accepted in the Beloved."

Shall we accept the testimony that G.o.d is satisfied with His Son? Shall we be satisfied with Him?

OCTOBER 30.

"Dwell deep" (Jer. xlix. 8).

G.o.d's presence blends with every other thought and consciousness, flowing sweetly and evenly through our business plans, our social converse our heart's affections, our manual toil, our entire life, blending with all, consecrating all, and conscious through all, like the fragrance of a flower, or the presence of a friend consciously near, and yet not hindering in the least the most intense and constant preoccupation of the hands and brain. How beautiful the established habit of this unceasing communion and dependence, amid and above all thoughts and occupations! How lovely to see a dear old saint folding away his books at night and humbly saying, "Lord Jesus, things are still just the same between us," and the falling asleep in His keeping.

So let us be stayed upon Him. Let us grow into Him with all the root and fibers of our being. He will not get tired of our friends.h.i.+p. He will not want to put us off sometimes. Beautiful the words of the suffering saint: "He never says good-bye." He stays. So let us be stayed on Him.

OCTOBER 31.

"My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (II. Cor. xii. 9).

G.o.d allowed the crisis to close around Jacob on the night when he bowed at Peniel in supplication to bring him to the place where he could take hold of G.o.d as he never would have done; and from that narrow pa.s.s of peril Jacob came enlarged in his faith and knowledge of G.o.d, and in the power of a new and victorious life. He had to compel David, by a long and painful discipline of years, to learn the almighty power and faithfulness of his G.o.d, and to grow up into the established principles of faith and G.o.dliness, which were indispensable for his subsequent and glorious career as the king of Israel.

Nothing but the extremities in which Paul was constantly placed could ever have taught him, and taught the church through him, the full meaning of the great promise he so learned to claim, "My grace is sufficient for thee." And nothing but our trials and perils would ever have led some of us to know Him as we do, to trust Him as we have, and to draw from Him the measures of grace which our very extremities made indispensable.

NOVEMBER 1.

"We will come unto him and make our abode with him" (John xiv. 23).

This idea of trying to get a holiness of your own, and then have Christ reward you for it, is not His teaching. Oh, no; Christ is the holiness; He will bring the holiness, and come and dwell in the heart forever.

When one of our millionaires purchases a lot, with an old shanty on it, he does not fix up the old shanty, but he gets a second-hand man, if he will have it, to tear it down, and he puts a mansion in its place. It is not fixing up the house that you need, but to give Christ the vacant lot, and He will excavate below our old life and build a house where He will live forever.

Now that is what we mean when we say that Christ will be the preparation for the blessing, and make way for His own approach. It is as when a great a.s.syrian king used to set out on a march. He did not command the people to make a road, but he sent on his own men, and they cut down the trees and filled the broken places, and levelled the mountains. So He will, if we will let Him, be the Coming King, the Author and Finisher of our faith.