Study of ACTS 1:1-8

This text records our Lord’s last meeting with His disciples while He was here on earth. He is preparing to ascend back into Heaven to sit down at the right hand of God. Before He leaves, He commands and commissions His men to reach the world with His message. He reminds them of what should be the central focus of their ministry. He reminds them that they are to keep the main thing the main thing!

· He had to overcome a distraction, v. 6-7. The disciples want to talk about future things. Jesus is trying conduct the world’s first mission’s conference and they want to turn it into a prophecy conference. They want to know if the time has come for Jesus to establish His kingdom here on earth. He tells them that the “times and seasons” are not their concern. Their responsibility was to be faithful to Him and work while they waited.

· Nothing has changed. Our duty is not to get caught up in future events, or any other theological dispute that distracts us from the main thing. We need to be careful that we do not allow Satan to distract us from our very purpose in being left in this world. Our duty is to be busy working for the Lord while we wait for Him to return. Verse 8 tells us what our duty is.

· Jesus, here, commands His disciples, living in all time periods, to be His witnesses to the world of His Gospel and of His saving grace. (Ill. The Gospel – 1 Cor. 15:3-4; Rom. 4:25 – Many believers disagree about how salvation takes place, but that does not change the Gospel! People should be able to disagree about the methods while embracing the same message!)

· Verse 8 is clear! Every believer is commissioned, commanded and constructed to share the Gospel with a lost world. We are His “ambassadors” in this world, 2 Cor. 5:20.

· Let me share some of the qualities shared by all Gospel witnesses. This text reminds us of exactly what we are to be doing as we move through this world. This passage teaches us about the main thing that the church is to be doing. I want to examine this passage and preach for a few minutes on Keeping The Main Thing The Main Thing.

· Why do I say this is the main thing? I say it because, here is Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected from the dead, and about to ascend into Heaven. He could have talked about anything in the world. But, His last words were a command and a commission to share the Gospel. If it was that important to Him, it should be equally important to us! The church needs to learn this lesson about Keeping The Main Thing The Main Thing.



I. WE MUST HAVE

THE RIGHT MESSAGE

· Jesus tells His men that they are to be witness “unto Me”. Jesus is to be the sole focus of their message.

· That has not changed! We are to tell the world about Him. We are not to talk about us, our lives, our beliefs, our denomination, our church, or our favorite preacher. None of those things have saving power! His message does, Rom. 1:16! We are to tell the world about Jesus!

· We are to tell the message of His love, His death and His resurrection. We are to share the message of the Gospel – 1 Cor. 15:3-4; Rom. 10:9-10; 13; John 3:16; Acts 16:31. We are to tell the world that Jesus will save anyone who comes to Him by faith!

· We are not sent to try and impress the world with our grasp of theology. Many people know the theories of theology, but they do not know Jesus. Many know all about the glories of Heaven, but they are headed to Hell. Like that blind man in John 9, all I know is, “once I was blind, but now I see,” and Jesus is the reason! That is the message we are to share with the world.

· Our only mission is to point people to Jesus. He is the only hope the world has for salvation, John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Acts 16:31.

· As someone said, all we are is “one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread”. Jesus is the “Bread of Life”, John 6:35. He is the solution to the spiritual hunger of the world. (Ill. I need to share with others what others shared with me, 2 Tim. 2:2!)



I. We Must Have The Right

Message



II. WE MUST HAVE

THE RIGHT METHODS

· The word “witness” translates the Greek word “martus”. It refers to “those who bear witness to the truth.” It came to be used of those who bore the ultimate witness to the truth; of those who laid down their lives for the truth. Thus, we get the word “martyr” from this word. The issue is not myths and legends, but facts and truth. Jesus is calling His people to tell others the truth about Him.

· The word “witness” was used in Bible times like it is used today. It speaks of those who testify in a court of law. A witness in a trial is called upon to tell what they have seen and what they know to be true.

· God is calling His people to tell what they know and what they have seen to be true. Do you know anything about Jesus Christ? Has God done anything for you through Jesus Christ? If you can answer yes to those questions that is what you are to tell the world.

Ø Do you know that God loves you? Tell the world!

Ø Do you know that you are saved? Tell the world!

Ø Do you know how God saves sinners? Tell the world!

Ø Do you know who to tell? Tell the world!

· We have some great examples in the Bible:

Ø Peter at Pentecost – Acts 2:14-41

Ø Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, Acts 8:26-39

Ø Paul before King Agrippa, Acts 26:1-31

Ø The Blind Man before the Sanhedrin, John 9:10-12; 15-17; 24-27; 30-33

Ø These great witnesses just told what they knew!

· That is all the Lord wants you to do – 1 Pet. 3:15!



I. We Must Have The Right

Message

II. We Must Have The Right

Methods



III. WE MUST HAVE

THE RIGHT MINDSET

· The witness in a court of law is to testify to the judge and the jury. The witness to Jesus Christ is to testify to the whole world! That is a big task, so Jesus breaks it down for us. We are to begin close and move out!

· We need to adopt the mindset of John Wesley who said, “The world is my parish!” Wesley knew that anywhere sinners could be found, there was a need for the Gospel and the Gospel witness. Our mission field is anywhere lost people can be found!

· Most of us will never go to “the uttermost part of the earth”, but we can serve in our Jerusalem. We can witness to our families, our friends, our co-workers, total strangers, to anyone we meet, anywhere we go.

· We are to always be “on mission” for Jesus, telling a lost and dying world that Jesus saves. If we get the opportunity to go to our Judea, our Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth, we should make good use of those open doors.

· Everyone we meet is either a believer, or they are in need of the Gospel! Let’s tell them about our Savior! Let’s share the glorious news that Jesus saves and will save all who will come to Him by faith, Rev. 22:17.

· What is really sad is that most believers will not talk to anyone who is outside their comfort zone. They will visit friends, family and acquaintances, but they won’t go to someone who is lost. They are afraid to share the Gospel outside their own realm of safety. As a result, most church members are not involved in any kind of evangelism. They have the mindset, “My four and no more”, when there is a whole world that must be reached with the Gospel of grace, and it is our job to take it to them!

· If we really believe that people are going to Hell without Jesus, and if we really believe that the Gospel is for all men, then why aren’t we doing more to get the Gospel to them? Why aren’t we out there telling a lost world that Jesus saves? Could it be that we really don’t believe everything we claim to believe? Could it be that we are saved and satisfied? Could it be that we have forgotten to keep the main thing the main thing?

We are preaching on the radio and the Internet every day. We are on TV every Sunday. A small handful of our people are involved in outreach through the C.A.R.E. ministry. Those things are good, but they do not take away our individual responsibility to share the Gospel with the world.



I. We Must Have The Right

Message

II. We Must Have The Right

Methods

III. We Must Have The Right

Mindset



IV. WE MUST HAVE

THE RIGHT MUSCLE

· If our message is to have any power; if our methods are to be successful; and if our mindset is ever to be what it ought to be; we are going to need help from outside ourselves. Jesus tells us in this verse that our help comes from the “Holy Ghost”.

The people in the upper room were promised that the Spirit of God was coming, and that when He came, He would fill them with God’s power, Luke 24:49. When that power came on the day of Pentecost, those terrified disciples, who had been hiding from the Jews in fear, became bold preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Acts 2:1-21. When they preached the Gospel, 3,000 souls were saved, Acts 2:41.

· What made the difference? It wasn’t their eloquence. It wasn’t their oratory. It wasn’t their delivery. What made the difference was the power of God on their lives!

· Where did that power come from?

Ø It came from the fact that they were saved and indwelled by the Holy Spirit, John 14:16-18; 1 Cor. 12:13.

Ø It came from the fact that they were prayed up and clean before God, Acts 1:14.

Ø It came from the fact that they were united in love, heart and purpose, Acts 2:1.

· That same power is available to us today! If we are going have the power of God on our witness, our words and our works, we are going to have get our lives in the kind of shape the Lord can bless and use. We are going to have to get like the early church, Acts 2:42-47. When we do, we will see the Lord pour out His power on our witness to the world. Until we do, we will spin our wheels and accomplish nothing for His glory.

· We desperately need God’s power on our lives and on our church. We will never enjoy His unction and power until our hearts are right with one another and with Him.

If you have a problem with a brother or sister in Christ, and you have not dealt with that issue biblically, that is a hindrance to the power of God being manifested in your life. If you have some secret sin buried in your life, it is a hindrance to the power of God being manifested in you. We need to stop looking at others and deal with our own hearts. When we do, and when we get where He would have us to be, we can and will enjoy His power on our witness.



Conc: How important is being a witness to you? What are you willing to change in your life so that you can be more effective as a witness? What are you willing to deal with so that the power of God may rest upon you? What price are you willing to pay for the touch of God on your life? How long has it been since you told someone else about Jesus?

Let me just remind you that everyone of us will give an account of our witness to Jesus come day, Rom. 14:12. The hour is late and the time to tell the world is now, John 9:4.

Church, we have been distracted from our mission. I think we all share some responsibility in that. This is the hour to recapture our mission. This is the moment when the main thing needs to become the main thing once again. It’s time to deal with our personal issues and it’s time to deal with our sins so that the power of God might rest on us and that God might be pleased to save souls in this place. It’s time to obey His voice.

Study of HEBREWS 13:20-21

"Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory forever and ever. HEBREWS 13:20-21.

THROUGHOUT this Epistle, the inspired writer has been appealing to man. Through successive paragraphs he has poured forth a burning stream of argument, remonstrance, or appeal; now opening the full peal of Sinai's thunders, and now the wail of Calvary's broken heart, and finally summoning the most honored names in Hebrew story to enforce his words.
All this is over now. He can say no more. The plowing and sowing and harrowing are alike complete. He must turn from earth to heaven, from man to God; and leave his converts and his work with that glorious Being whose cause he had striven so faithfully to plead, and who alone could crown his labors with success. There are many splendid outbursts of prayer beginning these Epistles; but amongst them all, it is impossible to find one more striking or beautiful than this.

THE BURDEN OF THE PRAYER is that these Hebrew Christians may be made perfect to do God's will. The word "perfect" means to set in joint, or articulate. Naturally, we are out of joint, or, at the best, work stiffly; but the ideal of Christian living is to be so perfectly "set" that God's purposes may be easily and completely realized in us.
There is no higher aim in life than to do the will of God. It was the supreme object for which our Saviour lived. This brought him from heaven. This determined his every action. This fed his inner life with hidden meat. This cleared and lit up his judgment. This led him with unfaltering decision into the valley of death. This was the stay and solace of his spirit as he drank the bitter cup of agony. Throughout his mortal life his one glad shout of assurance and victory was, "I delight to do thy will, my God; yea, thy law is within my heart." And human lives climb up from the lowlands to the upland heights just in proportion as they do the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven. If every reader of these lines would resolve from this moment to do the will of God in the very smallest things-with scrupulous care, counting nothing insignificant, shrinking from no sacrifice, evading no command-life would assume entirely a new aspect. There might be a momentary experience of suffering and pain; but it would be succeeded by the light of resurrection, and the new song of heaven, stealing like morning through the chambers of the soul.
God is love; to do his will is to scatter love in handfuls of blessing on a weary world. God is light; to do his will is to tread a path that shines more and more unto the perfect day. God is life; to do his will is to eat of the Tree of Life, and live forever, and to drink deep draughts of the more abundant life which Jesus gives. God is the God of hope; to do his will is to be full of all joy and peace, and to abound in hope. God is the God of all comfort; to do his will is to be comforted in all our tribulation by the tender love of a mother. God is the God of peace; to do his will is to learn the secret inner calm, which no storm can reach, no tempest ruffle. God is the God of truth; to do his will is to be on the winning side, and to be assured of the time when he will bring out our righteousness as the light, and our judgment as the noonday.
Why will you not, my readers, who have followed these chapters thus far to the last, resolve from this moment that your will shall henceforth say "Yes"to God's will, and that you will live out what be wills and works within? Probably, at the very outset, you will be tested by your attitude to some one thing. Do not try to answer all the suggestions or inquiries that may be raised tumultuously within, but deal immediately and decisively with that single item. Dare to say, with respect to it, "I will thy will, my God." And immediately the gate will open into the rapture of a new life. But remember that his will must be done in every work to which you put your hands; and then every work will be good.
We cannot tell how the mysterious promptings of our will are able to express themselves in our limbs and members. We only know that what we will in ourselves is instantly wrought out through the wonderful machinery of nerve and muscle. And we are quick to perceive when, through some injury or dislocation, the mandate of the will fails to be instantly and completely fulfilled. Nor do we rest content until the complete communication is restored.
But in all this there is a deep spiritual analogy. We are members, through grace, of the body of Christ. The will lies with him; and if we were living as we ought, we should be incessantly conscious of its holy impulses, withdrawing us from this, or prompting us to that. Our will would not be obliterated, but would elect to work in perpetual obedience and subordination to the will of its King. Alas! this is not our case. We are too little sensible of those holy impulses. On rare occasions we realize and yield to them. But how many of them fail to reach or move us, because we are out of joint! What prayer could better befit our lips than that the God of peace, the true surgeon of souls, would put us in joint, to do his will, with unerring accuracy, promptitude, and completeness!

MARK THE GUARANTEES THAT THIS PRAYER SHALL BE REALIZED. The appeal is made to the God of peace. He whose nature is never swept by the storms of desire or unrest; whose one aim is to introduce peace into the heart and life; whose love to us will not brook disappointment in achieving our highest blessedness, he must undertake this office; he will do it most tenderly and delicately; nor will he rest until the obstruction to the inflow of his nature is removed, and there is perfect harmony between the promptings of his will and our immediate and joyous response.

He brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep. To have given us a Shepherd was much; but to have given us so great a Shepherd is marvelous. He is the great Shepherd who died, just as he is the good Shepherd who knows his flock, and the chief Shepherd who is coming again. He is great, because of the intrinsic dignity of his nature; because of his personal qualifications to save and bless us; because of the greatness of his unknown sufferings; and because of the height of glory to which the Father hath exalted him. The words "brought again" are very expressive. They contain the idea of "brought up." More is meant than the reanimation of the dead body of Christ. There is included, also, his exaltation by the right hand of God, to be a Prince and a Saviour. And, surely, if our God has given us such a Shepherd, and raised him to such a glory, that he may help us the more efficiently, there is every reason why we should confidently count on his doing all that may needed in us, as he has done all that was needed for us.

He will certainly respect the everlasting covenant, which has been sealed with blood. God has entered into an eternal covenant with us to be our God and Friend. That covenant, which does not depend on anything in us, but rests on his own unchanging nature, has been ratified by the precious blood of his Son. As the first covenant was sealed by the sprinkled blood of slain beasts, so the second was sealed by the precious blood of Christ. "This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Thus spoke our Saviour on the eve of his death, with a weight of meaning which this Epistle was needed to explain. And is it likely that he who has entered into such a covenant with our souls-a covenant so everlasting, so divine, so solemn-will ever go back from it, or allow anything to remain undone which may be needed to secure its perfect and efficient operation? It cannot be! We may count, without the slightest hesitation, on the God of peace doing all that is required to perfect us in every good work to do his will.

THE DIVINE METHOD will be to work in us. It is necessary first that we should be adjusted so that there may be no waste or diversion of the divine energy. When that is done, then it will begin to pass into and through us in mighty tides of power. "God working in you." It is a marvelous expression! We know how steam works mightily within the cylinder, forcing up and down the ponderous piston. We know how sap works mightily within the branches, forcing itself out in bud and leaf and blossom. We read of a time when men and women were so possessed of devils that they spoke and acted as the inward promptings led them. These are approximations to the conception of the text, which towers infinitely beyond.
Have we not all been conscious of some of these workings? They do not work in us mightily as they did in the Apostle Paul, because we have not yielded to them as he did. Still, we have known them when the breath of holy resolution has Swept through our natures; or we have conceived some noble purpose; or have been impelled to some deed of self-sacrifice for others. These are the workings of God within the heart, not in the tornado only, but in the zephyr; not in the thunder alone, but in the still small voice. Every sigh for the better life, every strong and earnest resolution, every determination to leave the nets and fishing-boats to follow Jesus, every appetite for fellowship, every aspiration heavenward-all these are the result of God's in-working.
How careful we should be to gather up every divine impulse, and translate it into action! We must work out what he works in. We must labor according to his working, which works in us mightily. We must be swift to seize the fugitive and transient expression, embodying it in the permanent act.
It does not seem so difficult to live and work for God when it is realized that the eternal God is energizing within. You cannot be sufficiently patient to that querulous invalid, your patience is exhausted; but God is working his patience within you: let it come out through you. You cannot muster strength for that obvious Christian duty; but God is working that fruit in your innermost nature; be content to let it manifest itself by you. You are incompetent to sustain that Christian work, with its manifold demands; but stand aside, and let the eternal God work in and through you, to do by his strength what you in your weakness cannot do.
The Christian is the workshop of God. In that mortal but renewed nature the divine Artisan is at work, elaborating products of exquisite beauty and marvelous skill. Would that we might be less eager to give the world ourselves, and more determined that there should be a manifestation through all the gateways of our being of the wondrous in-working of the God of peace! Then we might say, with some approach to the words of our Lord, to such as demand evidences of his resurrection and life, "How sayest thou, Prove to me the resurrection of Jesus? the words which I speak, I speak not of myself; but my Saviour, who dwelleth in me, he doeth the works."

THE RESULT will be that we shall be well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ. Our good works can never be the ground of our acceptance or justification. The very best of them can only please God through Jesus Christ. Our purest tears need washing again in his blood. Our holiest actions need to be cleansed ere they can be viewed by a holy God. Our best prayers and gifts need to be laid on the altar which sanctifies all it touches. We could not stand before God for a moment, save by that one sufficient substitutionary sacrifice, once offered by Jesus on the cross, and now pleaded by him before the throne.
At the same time, our Father is pleased with our obedient loyalty to his will. He gives us this testimony, that we please him; as Enoch did, who walked with him before the flood. And it should be the constant ambition of our lives so to walk as to please him, and to obtain from him a faint echo of those memorable words which greeted our Saviour as he stepped upon the waters of Baptism: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

To him be glory forever and ever! Directly the soul is right with God, it becomes a vehicle for God; and thus a revenue of glory begins to accrue to God, which ceases not, but augments as the years roll by. And the time will never come when the spirit shall not still pour forth its glad rejoicings to the glory of him to whom is due the praise of all.
If your life is not bringing glory to God, see to it that at once you set to work to ascertain the cause. Learning it, let it be dealt with forthwith. Hand yourself over to God to make you and keep you right. And thus begin a song of love and praise, which shall rise through all coming ages, to the Father who chose you in Christ, to the Saviour who bought you with his blood, and to the Spirit who sanctifies the heart; one adorable Trinity, to whom be the glory forever and ever, Amen.

Study of HEBREWS 13:9

"It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein." HEBREWS 13:9.


IT is a good thing to have an established heart. With too many of us the inner life is variable and fickle. Sometimes we have days of deep religious earnestness, when it seems impossible for us to spend too long a time in prayer and fellowship with God. The air is so clear that we can see across the waters of the dividing sea, to the very outlines of the heavenly coasts. But a very little will mar our peace, and bring a veil of mist over our souls, to enwrap us perhaps for long weeks. Oh for an established heart!
Now there is one thing which will not bring about this blessed state of establishment. And that is indicated by the expression, "meats"; which stands for the ritualism of the Jewish law. There is ever a tendency in the human heart toward a religion of rites. It is so much easier to observe the prescriptions of an outward ceremonial than to brace the soul to faith and love and spiritual worship. Set the devotee a round of external observance, it matters little how rigorous and searching your demands, and the whole will be punctually and slavishly performed, with a secret sense of satisfaction in being thus permitted to do something toward procuring acceptance and favor with God.
There is a great increase of ritualistic observance amongst us. We behold with astonishment the set of our times toward genuflexions; the austerities of Lent; the careful observance of prolonged and incessant services; and all the demands of a severe ritual. People who give no evidence in their character or behavior of real religion are most punctilious in these outward religious rites. Young men will salve their consciences for a day of Sabbath-breaking by an early celebration. In many cases these things are revivals of ancient Babylonish customs, passed into the professing Church in the worst and darkest days of its history. But their revival points to the strong religious yearnings of human nature, and the fascination which is exerted by outward rites in the stead of inward realities.
But "meats" can never establish the inner life. The most ardent ritualist must confess to the sense of inward dissatisfaction and unrest, as the soul is condemned to pace continually the arid desert of a weary formalism, where it comes not to the green pastures or the waters of rest. "They have not profited them that have been occupied therein."
Another obstruction to an established heart arises from the curiosity which is ever running after divers and strange doctrines. In all ages of the Church, men have caught up single aspects of truth, distorting them out of the harmony of the Gospel, and carrying them into exaggerated and dangerous excess; and directly any one truth is viewed out of its place in the equilibrium of the Gospel, it becomes a heresy, leading souls astray with the deceitfulness of the false lights that wreckers wave along the beach. And when once we begin to follow the vagaries and notions of human teachers, apart from the teaching of the Spirit of God, we get into an unsettled, restless condition, which is the very antipodes to the established heart.
There is only one foundation which never rocks, one condition which never alters. "It is good that the heart be established with grace." Primarily, of course, the established heart is the gift of God. "He which stablisheth us with you in Christ is God." "The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself." "The God of all grace make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you." We need therefore to pray to him to give us the heart established in grace. But there are certain conditions also indicated in this context with which we do well to comply.

WE MUST FEED ON CHRIST. The very denial of the tenth verse proves that there is an altar whereof we have a right to eat. Not the Jews only, but Christians also, lay stress on eating; but ah, how different the food which forms their diet ! In the case of that ancient system out of which these Hebrew Christians had just emerged, the priests ate a considerable portion of the sacrifices which the people offered on the altar of God. This was the means of their subsistence. In consideration of their being set apart wholly to the divine service, and having no inheritance in the land, "they lived by the altar." But we, who are priests by a &viner right, have left behind us the Tabernacle, with its ritual and sacrifices, and cannot feed on these outward meats without betraying the spirituality of the holy religion we profess.
Our altar is the cross. Our sacrifice is the dying Saviour. Our food is to eat his flesh. "This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die." "The bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
Eating consists of three processes: apprehension, mastication, and assimilation; and each of these has its spiritual counterpart in that feeding upon Christ which is the very life of our life. We, too, must apprehend him, by the careful reading of the Word of God. The Word is in the words. His words are spirit and life. We need not be always reading them, any more than we should be always eating. But just as a good meal will go on nourishing us long after we have taken it, and indeed when we have ceased to think about it, so a prolonged prayerful study of the Word of God will nourish our souls for long afterward.
We, too, must fulfill the second process of eating by meditating long and thoughtfully on all that is revealed to us in the Word of the person and work of the Lord Jesus. It is only by allowing our heart and mind to dwell musingly on these sacred themes that they become so real as to nourish us. Better read less and meditate more, than read much and meditate little.
We too must assimilate Christ, until he becomes part of our very being, and we begin to live, yet not we, because Christ lives in us, and has become our very life. Our Lord told his disciples that he lived by the Father; and said that, if they desired to live in the same dependent state on himself, they must "eat him " (John vi. 57). In Christ's own case his being had reached such a pitch of union with his Father's that to see or hear or know him was to see and hear and know God. And if we would only spend more time alone with him in prayerful, loving fellowship, a great change would pass over us also, and we should be transformed into his likeness in successive stages of glory upon glory.
At regular intervals we meet around the table of the Lord to eat the bread and drink the wine. But our feeding on him ought to be as frequent as our daily ordinary meals.
Why should we feed the spiritless than we do the body? Alas! how we pamper the latter, and starve the former, until we get past the sense of desire! We spoil our appetite by feeding it with the cloying sweetmeats and morsels of sense. We are content to live as parasites on the juices of others, instead of acquiring nourishment at first hand for ourselves. What wonder that we are carried about by every wind of doctrine, and lack the established heart? And perhaps there would be nothing better for the whole of us Christian people than a revival of Bible study, a fresh consecration of the morning hour, a regular and systematic maintenance of seasons of prolonged fellowship with our Master and Lord.

IF WE WOULD FEED ON CHRIST, WE MUST GO WITHOUT THE CAMP. In the solemn ritual of the great Day of Atonement it was ordained that the bodies of all the victims which had suffered death as sin-offerings, and of which the blood had been sprinkled before the mercy-seat, should be burned Without the camp (Lev. xvi. 27). And in this mysterious specification, two truths were probably symbolized: first, that in the fullness of time, Jesus, the true sin-offering of the world, would suffer outside the city gate; and secondly, that men must leave the principles and rites of earthly systems behind them, if they Would realize all the blessedness of acceptance with God through the sacrifice of Christ.
If, then, we would have Jesus as our food, our joy, our life, we must not expect to find him in the camps which have been pitched by men of this world. We must go forth from all such; from the camp of the world's religiousness equally as from that of its sensuality; from the tents of its formalism and ritualism, as well as from those of its vanity.
The policy of going forth without the camp is the only safe course for ourselves, as it is the only helpful one for the world itself. There are plenty who argue that the wisest policy is to stop within the camp, seeking to elevate its morals. They do not realize that, if we adopt their advice, we must remain there alone; for our Lord has already gone. It is surely unbefitting that we should find a home where he is expelled. What is there in us which makes us so welcome, when our Master was cast out to the fate of the lowest criminals? Besides, it will not be long before we discover that, instead of our influencing the camp for good, the atmosphere of the camp will infect us with its evil. Instead of our leveling it up, it will level us down.
The only principle of moving the world is to emulate Archimedes in getting a point without it. All the men who have left a mark in the elevation of their times have been compelled to join the pilgrim host which is constantly passing through the city gates, and taking up its stand by the cross on which Jesus died. Looking back on that memorable spot, we seem to see it thronged with the apostles, martyrs, reformers, and prophets of every age, who invite us to join them. It remains with us to say whether we will linger amid the luxury and fascinations which allure us to the camp; or whether we will dare to take up our cross, and follow our Master along the Via Dolorosa, bearing his reproach. Ah, young hearts, secret disciples, halters between two opinions, the issue of such a choice cannot be doubtful! With the cry, Deus vult, you will join this new crusade, and take your stand with Jesus, at the trysting-place of his cross.

IF WE GO OUTSIDE THE CAMP, WE MUST BEAR HIS REPROACH. It is related of the good Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, that, at the commencement of his career as an evangelical clergyman at Cambridge, he encountered such virulent abuse and opposition that his spirit seemed on the point of being crushed. Turning to the Word of God for direction and encouragement, his eye lighted on the following passage: " As they came out they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear his cross." The similarity of the name to his own arrested him, and he was moved to new courage with the thought of his oneness with the sufferings of Jesus. So is it with us all. If we are reproached for the name of Jesus, happy are we; and we should rejoice, inasmuch as we are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that, when his glory is revealed, we also may be glad with exceeding joy.
How marvelous is it to learn the closeness of the bonds by which we are bound to the saints of the past When we are reproached for being Christians, we know something of what Moses felt when taunted in the royal palace of Egypt with his Hebrew origin; but "he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, because he had respect unto the recompense of reward."

BUT WHILST BEARING CHRIST'S REPROACH, WE SHALL FIND THE ONLY CONTINUING CITY. It is very remarkable that, as we tear ourselves away from the gate of the city, and say farewell to what had seemed to be a symbol of the most enduring fabrics of earthly permanence, we are really passing out of the transient and unreal to become citizens of the only enduring and continuing City.
The greatest cities of human greatness have not continued. Babylon, Nineveh, Thebes, the mighty cities of Mexico-all have passed. Buried in mounds, on which grass grows luxuriantly; while wild beasts creep through the moldering relics of the past. But, amid all, there is arising from age to age a permanent structure, an enduring City, a confederation which gathers around the unchanging Saviour, and has in it no elements of decay. Do we enough live in this City in our habitual experience? It is possible to tread its golden streets as we plod along the thoroughfares of earth's great cities; to mingle in its blessed companies, and share its holy exercises, though apparently we spend our days in dark city offices, and amid money-loving companions. The true pilgrim to tho City really lives in the City. It will not be long, and it shall not be only an object for faith and spiritual vision, it shall become manifest. See, it comes! it comes! the holy City out of heaven from God, radiant with his light, vocal with song, the home of saints, the metropolis of a redeemed earth, the Bride of the Lamb, for whom the universe was made.

Study of HEBREWS 13:

‘Jesus Christ the mine yesterday, and today, and for ever: — Hebrews 13:8.

How far back does this ‘yesterday’ go? The limit must be found by observing that it is ‘Jesus Christ’ who is spoken of — that is to say, the Incarnate Saviour. That observation disposes of the reference of these words to the past eternity in which the eternal Word of God was what He is to-day. The sameness that is referred to here is neither the sameness of the divine Son from all eternity, nor the sameness of the medium of revelation in both the old and the new dispensations, but the sameness of the human Christ to all generations of His followers. And the epoch referred to in the ‘yesterday’ is defined more closely if we observe the previous context, which speaks of the dying teachers who have had the rule and have passed away. The ‘yesterday’ is the period of these departed teachers; the ‘to-day’ is the period of the writer and his readers.

But whilst the words of my text are thus narrowly: limited, the attribute, which is predicated of Christ in them, is something more than belongs to manhood, and requires for its foundation the assumption of His deity. He is the unchanging Jesus because He is the divine Son. The text resumes at the end of the Epistle, the solemn words of the first chapter, which referred the declaration of the Psalmist to ‘the Son’ — ‘Thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.’ That Son, changeless and eternal by divine immutability, is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Redeemer.

This text may well be taken as our motto in looking forward, as I suppose we are all of us more or less doing, and trying to forecast the dim outlines of the coming events of this New Year. Whatever may happen, let us hold fast by that confidence, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.’

I. I apply these words, then, as a New-Year’s motto, in two or three different directions, and ask you to consider, first, the unchanging Christ in His relation to our changeful lives.

The one thing of which anticipation may be sure is that nothing continues in one stay. True, ‘that which is to be hath already been’; true, there is ‘nothing new under the sun’; but just as in the physical world the infinite variety of creatures and things is all made Out of a few very simple elements, so, in our lives, out of a comparatively small number of possible incidents, an immense variety of combinations results, with the effect that, while we may be sure of the broad outlines of our future, we are all in the dark as to its particular events, and only know that ceaseless change with characterise it. So all forward looking must have a touch of fear in it, and there is only one thing that will enable us to front the else intolerable certainty of uncertainty, and that is, to fall back upon this thought’ of my text, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’

The one lesson of our changeful lives ought to be for each of us the existence of that which changes not. By the very law of contrast, and by the need of finding sufficient reason for the changes, we are driven from the contemplation of the fleeting to the vision of the permanent. The waves of this stormy sea of life ought to fling us all high and dry on the safe shore. Blessed are they who, in a world of passing phenomena, penetrate to the still centre of rest, and looking over all the vacillations of the things that can be shaken, can turn to the Christ and say, Thou who movest all things art Thyself unmoved; Thou who changest all things, Thyself changest not. As the moon rises slow and silvery, with its broad shield, out of the fluctuations of the ocean, so the one radiant Figure of the all sufficient and immutable Lover and Friend of our souls should rise for us out of the billows of life’s tossing ocean, and come to us across the seal Brother! let the fleeting proclaim to you the permanent; let the world with its revolutions lead you up to the thought of Him who is the same for ever. For that is the only thought on which a man can build, and, building, be at rest.

The yesterday of my text may either be applied to the generations that have passed, and then the ‘to-day’ is our little life; or may be applied to my own yesterday, and then the to-day is this narrow present. In either application the words of my text are full of hope and of joy. In the former they say to us that no time can waste, nor any drawing from the fountain can diminish the all-sufficiency of that divine Christ in whom eighteen centuries have trusted and been ‘lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.’ The yesterday of His grace to past generations: is the prophecy of the future and the law for the present. There is nothing that any past epoch has ever drawn from Him, of courage and confidence, of hope and wisdom, of guidance and strength, of love and consolation, of righteousness and purity, of brave hope and patient endurance, which He does not stand by my side ready to give to me too to-day, ‘As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of Hosts,’ and the old Christ of a thousand years ago is the Christ of to-day, ready to help, to succour, and to make us like Himself.

In the second reference, narrowing the ‘yesterdays’ to our own experiences, the words are full of consolation and of hope. ‘Thou hast been my Help; leave me not, neither forsake me,’ is the prayer that ought to be taught us by every remembrance of what Jesus Christ has been to us. The high-water mark of His possible sweetness does not lie in some irrevocable past moment of our lives. We never have to say that we have found a sufficiency in Him which we never shall find any more. Remember the time in your experience when Jesus Christ was most tender, most near, most sweet, most mysterious, most soul-sufficing for you, and be sure that He stands beside you, ready to renew the ancient blessing and to surpass it in His gift. Man’s love sometimes wearies, Christ’s never; man’s basket may be emptied, Christ’s is fuller after the distribution than it was before. This fountain can never run dry. Not until seven times, but Until seventy times seven — perfection multiplied into perfection, and that again multiplied by perfection once more — is the limit of the inexhaustible mercy of our Lord, and all in which the past has been rich lives in the present. Remember, too, that this same thought which heartens us to front the inevitable changes, also gives dignity, beauty, poetry, to the small prosaic present. ‘Jesus Christ is the same to-day.’ We are always tempted to think that this moment is commonplace and insignificant. Yesterday lies consecrated in memory; to-morrow, radiant in hope; but to-day is poverty- stricken and prose. The sky is farthest away from us right over our heads; behind and in front it seems to touch the earth. But if we will only that all that sparkling lustre and all that more than mortal tenderness of pity and of love with which Jesus Christ has irradiated and sweetened any past is verily here with us amidst the commonplaces and insignificant duties of the dusty to-day, then we need look back to no purple distance, nor forward to any horizon where sky and earth kiss, but feel that here or nowhere, now or never, is Christ the all-sufficient and unchanging Friend. He is faithful. He cannot deny Himself.

II. So, secondly, I apply these words in another direction. I ask you to think of the relation between the unchanging Christ and the dying helpers.

That is the connection in which the words occur in my text. The writer has been speaking of the subordinate and delegated leaders and rulers in the Church ‘who have spoken the word of God’ and who have passed away, leaving a faith to be followed, and a conversation the end of which is to be considered. And, turning from all these mortal companions, helpers, guides, he bids us think of Him who liveth for ever, and for ever is the teacher, the companion the home of our hearts, and the goal of our love. All other ties — sweet, tender, infinitely precious, have been or will be broken for you and me. Some of us have to look back upon their snapping; some of us have to look forward. But there is one bond over which the skeleton fingers of Death have no power, and they fumble at that knot in vain. He separates us from all others; blessed be God! he cannot separate us from Christ. ‘I shall lose Thee though I die’; and Thou, Thou diest never.

God’s changeful providence comes into all our lives, and ports dear ones, making their places empty, that Christ Himself may fill the empty places, and, striking away other props, though the tendrils that twine round them bleed with the wrench, in order that the plant may no longer trail along the ground, but twine itself round the Cross and climb to the Christ upon the throne. ‘In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne.’ The true King was manifested when the earthly, shadowy monarch was swept away. And just as, on the face of some great wooded cliff, when the leaves drop, the solemn strength of the everlasting rock gleams out pure, so when our dear ones fall away, Jesus Christ is revealed, ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’ ‘They tautly were many, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death.’ ‘This Man continueth ever.’ He lives, and in Him all loves and companionships live unchanged. III. So, further, we apply, in the third place, this thought to the relation between the unchanging Christ and decaying institutions and opinions.

The era in which this Epistle was written was an era of revolution no great that we can scarcely imagine its apparent magnitude. It was close upon the final destruction of the ancient system of Judaism an external institution. The temple was tottering o its fall, the nation was ready to be scattered, and the writer, speaking to Hebrews, to whom that crash seemed to be the passing away of the eternal verities of God, bids them lift their eyes above all the chaos and dust of dissolving institutions and behold the true Eternal, the ever-living Christ. He warns them in the verse that follows nay text not to be carried about with divers and strange doctrines, bat to keep fast to the unchanging Jesus. And so these words may well come to us with lessons of encouragement, and with teaching of duty and steadfastness, in an epoch of much unrest and change — social, theological, ecclesiastical— such as that in which our lot is cast. Man’s systems are the shadows on the hillside. Christ is the everlasting solemn mountain itself, Much in the popular conception and representation of Christianity is in the act of passing. Let it go; Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. We need not fear change within the limits of His Church or of His world. For change there means progress, and the more the human creations and embodiments of Christian truth crumble and disintegrate, the more distinctly does the solemn, single, unique figure of Christ the Same, rise before us. There is nothing in the world’s history to compare with the phenomenon which is presented by the unworn freshness of Jesus Christ after all these centuries. All other men, however burning and shining their light, flicker and die out into extinction, and but for a season can the world rejoice in any of their beams; but this Jesus dominates the ages, and is as fresh to-day, in spite of all that men say, as He was eighteen centuries ago. They toll us He is losing His power; they tell us that mists of oblivion are wrapping Him round, as He moves slowly to the doom which besets Him in common with all the great names of the world. The wish is father to the thought. Christ is not done with yet, nor has the world done with Him, nor is He less available for the necessities of this generation, with its perplexities and difficulties, than He was in the past. His sameness is consistent with an infinite unfolding of new preciousness and new powers, as new generations with new questions arise, and the world seeks for fresh guidance. ‘I write no new commandment unto you’; I preach no new Christ unto you, ‘again, a new commandment I write unto you,’ and every generation will find new impulse, new teaching, new shaping energies, social and individual, ecclesiastical, theological, intellectual, in the old Christ who was crucified for our offences and raised again for our justification, and remains ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’ IV. Lastly, look at these words in their application to the relation between the unchanging Christ and the eternal life of heaven.

The ‘for ever’ of my text is not to be limited to this present life, but it runs on into the remotest future, and summons up before us the grand and boundless prospect of an eternal unfolding and reception of new beauties in the old earthly Christ. For Him the change between the ‘to-day’ of His earthly life and the ‘for ever’ of His ascended glory made no change in the tenderness of His heart, the sweetness of His smile, the nearness of His helping hand. The beloved apostle, when he saw Him for the first time after He was ascended, fell at His feet as dead, because the attributes of His nature had become so glorious. But when the old hand, the same hand that had been pierced with the nails on the Cross, though it now held the seven stars, was laid upon him, and the old voice, the same voice that had spoken to him in the upper room, and in feebleness from the Cross,’ though it was now as the ‘sound of many waters,’ said to him, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last; I am He that liveth and was dead and am alive for ever more’; John learned that the change from the Cross to the throne touched but the circumference of his Master’s Being, and left the whole centre of His love and brotherhood wholly unaffected.

Nor will the change for us, from earth to the close communion of the heavens, bring us into contact with a changed Christ. It will be but like the experience of a man starting from the outermost verge of the solar system, where that giant, planet welters, away out in the darkness and the cold, and travelling inwards ever nearer and nearer to the central light, the warmth becoming more fervent, the radiance becoming more wondrous, as he draws closer and closer to the greatness which he divined when he was far away, and which he knows better when he is beside it. It will be the same Christ, the Mediator, the Revealer in heaven, whom we here dimly saw and knew to be the Sun of our souls through the clouds and mists of earth.

That radiant and eternal sameness will consist with continual variety, and an endless streaming forth of new lustres and new powers. But through all the growing proximity and illumination of the heavens He will be the same Jesus that we knew upon earth; still the Friend and the Lover of our souls. So, dear friends, if you and I have Him for our very own, then we do not need to fear change, for change will be progress; nor loss, for loss will be gain; nor the storm of life, which will drive us to His breast; nor the solitude of death, for our Shepherd will be with us there. He will be ‘the same for ever’; though we shall know Him more deeply; even as we shall be the same, though ‘changed from glory into glory.’. If we have Him, we may be sure, on earth, of a ‘to-morrow,’ which ‘shall be as this day, and much more abundant.’ If we have Him, we may be sure of a heaven in which the sunny hours of its unending day will be filled with fruition and ever new glories from the old Christ who, for earth and heaven, is ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’

Study of HEBREWS 13:5-6

‘He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. 6. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.’ — Hebrews 13:5, 6.

‘HE hath said’; ‘we may... say.’ So, then, here are two voices; or, rather, a voice and an echo — God’s voice of promises, and man’s answering voice of confidence. God speaks to us that we may speak to Him; and when He speaks His promises, the only fitting answer is to accept them as true in all their fulness fixed confidence.

The writer quotes two passsges as from the Old Testament. The first of them is not found verbatim anywhere there; the nearest approach to it, and obviously the source of the quotation, occurs in a connection that is worth noting. When Moses was handing over the charge of his people to his successor, Joshua, he said first to the people and then to Joshua, ‘Be strong and of good courage .... He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee.’ The writer of the Epistle falls back upon these words with a slight alteration, and turns ‘He’ into’ I,’ simply because he recognised that when Moses spoke, God was speaking through him, and countersigning with His own seal the promise which His servant made in His name. The other passage comes from the 118th Psalm. So, then, let us listen to the divine voice and the human answer.

I. God’s voice of promise.

‘He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.’ Now, notice that there is a distinct parallel between the position of the people to whom this Epistle was addressed, and that of the Hebrews to whom the original promise was made. The latter were standing on the verge of a great change. They were passing from under the leadership of Moses, and going under the leadership of the untried Joshua. Is it fanciful to recall that Joshua and Jesus are the same name; and that the difficulty which Israel on the borders of Canaan had to face, and the difficulty which these Hebrew Christians had to encounter, were similar, being in each case a change of leaders — the ceasing to look to Moses and the beginning to take commands from another? To men in such a crisis, when venerable authority was becoming antiquated, it might seem as if nothing was stable. Very appropriate, therefore, and strong was the encouragement given by pointing away from the flowing river to the Rock of Ages, rising changeless above the changing current off human life. So Moses said to his generation, and the author of the Epistle says after him to his contemporaries you may change the leaders, but you keep the one Presence.

This letter goes on the principle throughout that everything which belonged to Israel, in the way of institutions, sacred persons, promises, is handed over to the Christian Church, and we are, as it were, served heirs to the whole of these. So, then, to every one of us the message comes, and comes in its most individual aspect, ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.’ Now, ‘to leave’ and ‘to forsake’ are identical, and the promise, if we keep to the Authorised Version, is a repetition, in the two clauses, of the same thought. But whilst the two clauses are substantially identical, there is a very beautiful variation in the form in which the one assurance is given in them. With regard to the first of them, ‘I will never leave thee,’ both in the Hebrew and in the Greek the word which is employed, and which is translated ‘leave,’ means the withdrawing of a hand that sustains. And so the Revised Version wisely substitutes for ‘leave thee,’ ‘I will never fail thee.’ We might even put it more colloquially, and approach more nearly the original expression, if we said, ‘He will never drop thee’; never let His hand slacken, never withdraw its sustaining power, but will communicate for ever, day by day, not only the strength, but the conscious security that comes from feeling that great, strong, gentle hand, closing thee round and keeping thee tight. No man ‘shall pluck them out of My father’s hand.’


‘The Lord upholdeth all that fall,’ says one Psalm, and another of the psalmists puts it even more picturesquely; ‘When I said my foot slippeth, Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up,’ To Say ‘my foot slippeth,’ with a strong emphasis on the ‘my’ is the sure way to be able to say the other thing: ‘Thy mercy held me up.’ ‘He shall not fall, for the Lord is able to make him stand.’ Suppose a man on some slippery glacier, not accustomed to ice- work, as he feels his foot going out from under him, he gets nervous, and nervousness means a fall, and a fall means disaster and sometimes death.

So he grips the guide’s hand, and then he can walk. There is Peter, out on the sea that he had presumptuously asked leave to walk on, and as he feels the cold water coming above his ankle, and sees it rising higher and higher, he begins to fear, and his fear makes him heavier, so that he sinks the faster, till the very extremity of need and paroxysm of terror strike out a spark of faith, and faith and fear are strangely blended in the cry: ‘Lord, save me.’ Christ’s outstretched hand answered the cry, and its touch held Peter up, made him buoyant again, and as he rose, the water seemed to sink beneath his feet, and on that heaving pavement, glistening in the moonlight, he walked till he was helped into the boat again. So will God do for us, if we will, for He has said: ‘I will never relax My grasp. Nothing ‘shall ever come between My hand and thine.’ When a nurse or a mother is holding a child’s hand, her grip slackens unless it is perpetually repeated by fresh nervous tension. So all human helps tend to become less helpful, and all human love has its limits. But God’s hand never slackens its grip, and we may be sure that, as He has grasped He will hold, and ‘keep that which we have committed unto Him.’

But mark the other form of the promise. ‘I will never drop thee’ — that promises the communication of sustaining strength according to our need:‘nor forsake thee’ — that is the same promise, in another shape.

The tottering limbs need to be held up. The lonely heart walking the way of life, lonely after all companionship, and which has depths that the purest human love cannot sound, and sometimes dark secrets that it durst not admit the dearest to behold — that heart may have a divine companion. Here is a word for the solitary, and we are all solitary. Some of us, more plainly than others, are called upon to walk a lonely read in a great darkness, and to live lives little apprehended, little sympathised with, by others, or perchance having for our best companion, next to God, the memories of those who are beside us no more. Moses died, Joshua took his place; but behind the dying Moses-buried in his unknown grave, and left far away as the ties crossed the Jordan — and behind the living Joshua, there was the Lord who liveth for ever. ‘I will not forsake thee.’ Dear ones go, and take half our hearts with them People misunderstand us. We feel that we dare not open out our whole selves to any. We feel that, just as scientists tell us that no two atoms of the most solid body are in actual juxtaposition, but that there is a film of air between them, and hence all bodies are more or less elastic, if sufficient pressure be applied, so after the closest companionship there is a film. But that film makes no separation between us and God. ‘I will not drop thee’ — there is the of strength according to our need. I will not forsake thee,’ there is companionship in all our solitude.

But do not let us forget that all God’s promises have conditions appended, and that this one has its conditions like all the rest. Was not the history of Israel a contradiction of that glowing promise which was given them before they crossed the Jordan? Does the Jew to-day look as if he belonged to a nation that God would never leave nor forsake? Certainly not. And why? Simply because God’s promise of not dropping us, and of never leaving us, is contingent upon our not dropping Him, and of our never leaving Him.

‘No man shall pluck them out of My Father’s hand’ No; but they can wriggle themselves out of their Father’s hand. They can break the communion; they can separate themselves, and bring a film, not of impalpable and pure atmosphere, but of poisonous gases, between themselves and God. And God who, according to the grand old legend, before the Roman soldier flung his torch into the Holy of Holies, and’ burnt up the beautiful house where our fathers praised Him with fire,’ was heard saying, ‘Let us depart hence,’ does say sometimes, when a man has gone away from Him, ‘I will go and return to My place until they seek Me. In their affliction, they will seek Me early.’

And now let me say a word about the second voice that sounds here.

II. The human answer, or the echo of the divine voice.

If God speaks to me, He waits for me to speak to Him. My answer should be immediate, and my answer should embrace as true all that He has said to me, and my answer should build upon His great faithful promise a great triumphant confidence. Do we speak to God in the strain in which He speaks to us? When He says, ‘I will,’ do our hearts leap up with joyful confidence, and answer, ‘Thou dost’? Do we take all His promises for our trust, or do we meet His firm ‘assurance with a feeble, faltering faith? We turn God’s ‘verily’ into a peradventure, often, and at best when He says to us ‘I will,’ we doubtingly say ‘perhaps He may.’ That is the kind of faith, even at its highest, with which the best of us meet this great promise, building frail tabernacles on the Rock of Ages and putting shame on God’s faithfulness by our faithlessness. ‘He hath said,’ and then He pauses and listens, whether we are going to say anything in answer, and whether when He promises: ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,’ We are bold to say, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man can do unto me.’ Now, I do not suppose that I am’ keeping too slavishly to the mere words of the text if I ask you to look at the beautiful sequence of thought in these three clauses which make the response of the man to the divine promise. There is a kind of throb of wonder in that word. ‘The Lord is my helper.’ That is the answer of faith to the divine promise, grasping it, never hesitating about it, laying it upon the heart, or on the fevered forehead like a cooling leaf, to subdue the hot pulsations there. And then what comes next? ‘I will not fear.’ We have the power of controlling our apprehension of peril, but it is Of no use to screw ourselves up to a fictitious courage which consists mainly in the ostrich’s wisdom of hiding its head from the danger, and in saying, ‘Who is afraid?’ Unless we can say ‘The Lord is my helper,’ it is folly to say, ‘I will not be afraid, I will brace myself up, and be courageous to meet these difficulties. That is all right, but it is not all right unless we have laid the right foundation for courage. Having our purged ears opened to hear the great, strong, sweet divine promise, we are able to coerce our terrors, and to Banish them from our minds By the assurance that, whatever comes, God is with us. ‘The Lord is my helper ‘ — that is the foundation, and built upon that — and madness unless it is built upon it— is the courage which says to all my fears,’ Down, down, you are not to get the mastery over me.’ ‘I will trust,’ says the Psalmist, ‘and not be afraid.’ Faith is the antagonist to fear, because faith grasps the fact of the divine promise.

Now, there is another thought which may come in here since it is suggested by the context, and that is, that the recognition of God thus, as always With us to sustain us, makes all earthly conditions tolerable. The whole of my text is given as the ground of the exhortation: ‘Be content with such things as ye have,’ for He hath said, ‘I will never leave thee.’ If Thou dost not leave me, then such things as I have are enough for me, and if Thou hast gone away, no things that I merely have are of much good to me. And then comes the last stage in our answer to what God says, which is better represented by a slight variation in translation, putting the last words of my text as a question: ‘What can man do unto me?’ It is safe to look at men and things, and their possibly calamitous action upon our outward lives, when we have done the other two things, grasped God and rested in faith on Him. If we begin with what ought to come last, and look first at what man can do unto us, then fear will surge over us, as it ought to do. But if we follow the order of faith, and start with God’s promise, grapple that to our heart, and put down with strong hand the craven dread that coils round our hearts, then we can look out with calm eyes upon all the appearances that may threaten evil, and say, ‘Come on, Come all, my foot is on the Rock of Ages, and my back is against it, No man can touch me,’ So we may boldly say, ‘What can man do unto me?’

Study of HEBREWS 12:22-24

"Ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, . . . and to an innumerable company of angels; to the general assembly and church of the firstborn; . . and to God the Judge of all; and to the spirits of just men made perfect; and to Jesus; and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. "HEBREWS 12:22-24.


To how great splendor had these Hebrew Christians been accustomed-marble courts, throngs of white-robed Levites, splendid vestments, the state and pomp of symbol, ceremonial, and choral psalm! And to what a contrast were they reduced-a meeting in some hall or school, with the poor, afflicted, and persecuted members of a despised and hated sect! It was indeed a change, and the inspired writer knew it well; and in these magnificent words, the sublime consummation and crown of his entire argument, he sets himself to show that, for every single item they had renounced, they had become possessed of a spiritual counterpart, a reality, an eternal substance, which was compensation told over a thousand fimes.

"Ye are come." He refuses to admit the thought of it being a future experience, reserved for some high day, when the heavenly courts shall be thronged by the populations of redeemed and glorified spirits. That there will be high days of sacred festivity in that blessed state is clear from the Apocalypse of the beloved Apostle. But it is to none of them that these words allude. Mark that present tense, "Ye are come." Persecuted, weary, humiliated, these Hebrew Christians had already come to Mount Sion, to the city of the living God, and to the festal throngs of the redeemed. That they saw not these by the eye, and could not touch them by the hand of sense, was no reason for doubting that they had come to these glorious realities. And what was true of them is true of each reader of these lines who is united to the Lord Jesus by a living faith.

WE BELONG TO MOUNT SION. "Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire, . . . but ye are come unto Mount Sion." At the bidding of these two words two mountains rise before us. First, Sinai, stern and naked, rifted by tempest, cleft by earthquake, the center and focus of the vast sandstone passages which conducted the pilgrim host, stage above stage, until it halted at its foot.
But, grand as Sinai was by nature, it must have been grander far on that memorable day in which all elements of terror seemed to converge. There was the flash of the forked lightning out of the blackness of the brooding clouds. There was the darkness of midnight; the peal of thunder, the reverberations of which ran in volumes of sound along those resounding corridors; the whirlwind of tempest, and the voice of words which they entreated they might not hear any more. And all was done to teach the people the majesty, the spirituality, and the holiness of God. The result was terror, struck into the hearts of sinners, trembling at the contrast between the greatness and holiness of God and their own remembered murmurings and shortcomings. Even Moses said: "I exceedingly fear and quake."
In contrast with this stands Mount Sion, the gray old rock on which stood the palace of David and the Temple of God-sites sacred to Jewish thought for holy memories and divine associations. "The Lord hath chosen Sion, he hath desired it for his habitation. This is my rest forever; here will I dwell; for I have desired it." To the pious Jew, Mount Sion was the joy of the whole earth, the mountain of holiness, the city of the Great King. Her palaces, gray with age, were known to be the home and haunt of God. The very aspect of the hoary hills must strike panic into the heart of her foes. And her sons walked proudly around her ramparts, telling her towers, marking her bulwarks, considering her palaces, whilst fathers told to their children the Stories of her glory which in their boyhood they too had received (Psalm xlviii.).
The counterpart of this city is ours still, ours forever. The halo of glory has faded off those ancient stones, and has passed on to rest on the true city of God, of which the foundations are Righteousness, the walls Peace, and the gates Praise; which rises beyond the mists and clouds of time, in the light that shines not from the sun or moon, but from the face of God. In other words, somewhere in this universe there is a holy society of souls, pure and lovely, the elite of the family of man, gathered in a home which the hand of man has never piled, and the sin of man has never soiled. Its walls are jasper, its gates pearl. Into it nothing can enter that defiles or works abomination, and deals in lies.
The patriarchs caught sight of that city in their pilgrimage; it gleamed before their vision, beckoning them ever forward, and forbidding their return to the country from which they had come out. And the Seer of Patmos beheld it descending from God out of heaven, bathed in the divine glory.
To that city we have come. It has come down into our hearts; day by day we walk its streets; we live in its light, we breathe its atmosphere, we enjoy its rights. We have no counterpart in our experience of Mount Sinai, with its thunder and terror; but, thank God, we have the reality of Mount Sion, with its blessed and holy privileges. Sinai is the law, temporary and intermediate; Sion, the Gospel, eternal and abiding. Sinai is full of human resolutions and vows, made to be broken; Sion is the election of grace. Sinai is terrible with the thunder of law; Sion is tender with the appeals of the love of the heart of God.

WE BELONG TO A GREAT FESTAL THRONG. The converted Jew might miss the vast crowds that gathered at the annual feasts, when the tribes of the Lord went up; whilst kinsfolk and acquaintance took sweet counsel together, as they went to the house of God in company. But, to the opened eye of faith, the rooms where they knelt in worship were as full of bright and festal multitudes as the mountain of old was full of horses and chariots of fire. And these are for us also.

There is an innumerable company of angels. Myriads. Thousand thousands minister to our Lord; ten thousand times ten thousand stand before him. When, therefore, the saintly spirit ascends the altar steps of true devotion, it passes through a vast host of sympathetic spirits, all of whom are devoted to the same Master, and are joining in the same act of worship. Listen! Do you not hear the voice of many angels around the throne as you draw nigh?

There is also the general assembly and Church of the first-born. We meet the Church of the redeemed each time we sincerely worship God. We may belong to some small section of the visible Church, unrecognized and unknown by the great bulk of our fellow-believers. We may be isolated from all outward fellowship and communion with the saints, imprisoned in the sick-chamber, or self-banished to some lone spot for the sake of the Gospel; but nothing can exclude us from living communion with saintly souls of all communions and sects and denominations and names.
Your name may be written on no communicants' roll, or church register. But is it written in the Lamb's Book of Life in heaven? If so, then rejoice! This is more important than if the spirits were subject to you. And, remember, whenever you worship God you are ascending the steps of the true temple, in company with vast hosts of souls, whether on this side or on the other of the veil of sense. Neither life nor death nor rite nor church order can divide those who, because they are one with Christ, are forever one with each other.

There are also the spirits of just men made perfect. If the former phrase rather speaks of the New Testament believers, this may be taken to describe the Old Testament saints. Or, if the one designates those who are still serving God on earth, the other probably refers to those who have passed into the presence of God, and have attained their consummation and bliss.
Who can be lonely and desolate, who can bemoan the past, who can disparage the present, when once the spirit is able to realize that rejoicing company, in earth and heaven, circling around the Saviour as planets around the central sun, and sending in tides and torrents of love and worship? Yea, who can forbear to sing, as the ear detects the mighty harmonies of every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, saying, "Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever."

WE ARE COME TO THE BLOOD OF JESUS. We dare not approach the august Judge of all, were it not for the Mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ the righteous. Nor would he avail for his chosen work, unless he had shed his most precious blood, which has ratified the new covenant, and cleansed away our sins, and now ever avails to sprinkle us from an evil conscience, removing each stain of guilt so soon as the soul confesses and seeks forgiveness, with tears of penitence and words of faith.

It speaks better things than Abel's. That was the blood of martrydom; this of sacrifice. That accursed, as it cried from the ground; this only pleads for mercy. That denounced wrath; this proclaims reconciling love. That led to punishment which branded the murderer; this issues in salvation. That was unto death; this is unto life.
All blood has a cry. Listen to the cry of the blood of Jesus. It speaks to man for God. It speak~ to God for man. It tells us that there is no condemnation, no wrath, no judgment; because the thunderstorm broke and exhausted itself on Calvary. And when we go to our Father, it pleads for us from the wounds of the Lamb as it had been slain.
Oh, precious blood! if better than that of Abel, how much better than all the blood of all the beast1 ever slain; than all the sacrifices ever offered; than al1 the tears or prayers ever presented in the strength of human virtue: we cannot, we will not refuse thee, or turn away from thy pleading cry, or reject him who once spake from the cross, and now speaks from heaven!

Study of HEBREWS 12;14-15

"Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled."-HEBREWS 12:14, 15.


How beautiful and solemn are these words, like the swelling cadence of heaven's own music. Evidently they do not emanate from this sorrow-stricken and warring world; they are one of the laws of the kingdom of heaven, intended to mold and fashion our life on earth. It is quite likely that those who elect to obey them may not achieve name and fame amongst men; but they will win something infinitely better-the beatitude of blessedness, the smile of the Saviour, and the vision of God.
There are souls among us of whom the world is not worthy; yet for whom the world, when it catches sight of them, prepares its bitterest venom; who have withdrawn their interest from the ambitions and schemes, the excitements and passions of their fellows, and who live a retired life, hidden with Christ in God, content to be unknowing and unknown; eager only to please God, to know him, or rather to be known of him, and to preserve the perfect balance of their nature with him, as its center and pivot and final cause. Such souls, perhaps, will best understand the infinite meaning and beauty of these deep and blessed words.
THERE IS OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD GOD. " Follow after holiness." In the Revised Version this is rendered sanctification." And this in turn is only a Latin equivalent for "setting apart ", as Sinai among mountains; the Sabbath among the days of the week; the Levites among the Jews; and the Jews among the nations of the earth.
But after all there is a deeper thought. Why were people, places, and things set apart? Was it not because God was there? He came down in might and glory on Sinai; therefore they needed to set bounds around its lower declivities. He chose to rest on the seventh day from all his work; therefore it was hallowed and sanctified. He selected the Jews to be his peculiar people, and the Levites to be his priests; therefore they were isolated from all beside. He appeared to Moses in the bush, glowing with the light of the Shekinah; therefore the spot was holy ground, and the shepherd needed to bare his feet. In other words, it is the presence of God which makes holy. There is only one Being in all the universe who is really holy. Holiness is the attribute of his nature, and of his nature only. We can never be holy apart from God; but when God enters the spirit of man, he brings holiness with him. Nay, the presence of God in man is holiness.
A room or public building may be full of delicious sunlight. But that sunlight is not the property of the room. It does not belong to it. You cannot congratulate it upon its possession. For when the shadows of evening gather, and curtain the face of the sun, the chamber is as dark as possible. It is light only so long as the sun dwells in it. So the human spirit has no holiness apart from God. Holiness is not a perquisite or property or attribute to which any of us can lay claim. It is the indwelling of God's light and glory within us. He is the holy man in whom God dwells. He is the holier in whom God dwells more fully. He is the holiest who, however poor his intellect and mean his earthly lot, is most possessed and filled by the presence of God through the Holy Ghost. We need not wonder at the Apostle addressing believers as saints, when he was able to say of them: "Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you" (1 Cor. iii. 16; vi. 19).

Why, then, does the sacred writer bid us "follow after holiness," as though it were an acquisition? Because, though holiness is the infilling of man's spirit by the Spirit of God, yet there are certain very important conditions to be observed by us if we would secure and enjoy that blessed gift.

Give self no quarter. It is always asserting itself in one or other of its Protean shapes. Do not expect to be rid of it. Even if you say you have conquered it, then it lurks beneath the smile of your self-complacency. It may show itself in religious pride, in desire to excel in virtue, in the satisfaction with which we hear ourselves remarked for our humility. It will need incessant watchfulness, because where self is there God cannot come. He will not share his glory with another. When we are settling down to slumber, we may expect the cry, "Thine enemy is upon thee; "for it will invade our closets and our places of deepest retirement.
It is impossible to read the Epistles of the Apostle Peter without being impressed with the solemn and awful character of the Christian life, the constant need of watchfulness, the urgency for diligence, self-restraint, and self-denial. Oh for this holy sensitiveness! always exercising the self~watch; never sparing ourselves; merciful to others because so merciless to self; continually exercising ourselves to preserve a conscience void of offense toward God and men.

Yield to God. He is ever seeking the point of least resistance in our natures. Help him to find it; and when found, be sure to let him have his blessed way. "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." Work out what God works in. Translate the thoughts of God into the vernacular of daily obedience. Be as plastic to his touch as clay in the hands of the potter, so that you may realize every ideal which is in his heart. Be not as the horse and mule, but let your mouth be tender to every motion of the divine purpose concerning you. And if you find it difficult to maintain this attitude, be sure to tell your difficulty to the Holy Spirit, and trust him to keep your heart steadfast and unmovable, fixed and obedient.

Take time to it. "Follow after." This habit is not to be acquired in a bound or at a leap. It can be formed in its perfection only after years of self-discipline and watchful self-culture. To abide ever in Christ, to yield to God, to keep all the windows of the nature open toward his gracious infilling, to turn naturally to him, and first, amid peril and temptations, in all times of sorrow and trial, this is not natural, but it may become as second nature by habitual diligence.
But it must necessarily be the work of time ere the sense of effort ceases and the soul naturally and spontaneously turns to God "in every hour of waking thought." And if we are to acquire this blessed and perpetual attitude of soul, we must take time to acquire it, as to acquire aught else which is really precious. It must be no by~play; nor the work of off or leisure hours; nor a pastime: but the serious object of life, the purpose which shall thread all the varied beads of life's chain, and give a beautiful unity to all.

To such a character there shall be the vision of God. "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God." Had you been beside Moses during his forty days in the heart of the cloud, when he saw God face to face, you would not have seen him if you had not been holy. Had you stood beside the martyr Stephen when he beheld the glory of God, and the Son of man standing beside him, your eyes would have discerned nothing if you had not been holy. Yea, if it were possible for you without holiness to pass within the pearly gate, you would not see the sheen, as it were, of sapphire; you would carry with you your own circumference of darkness, and the radiant vision would vanish as you approached. "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord."
The heart has eyes as well as the head; and for want of holiness these become seriously impaired, so that the wise in their own conceits see not, whilst those who are simple, humble, and pure in heart behold the hidden and prepared things of God. The one condition for seeing God in his Word, in nature, in daily life, and in closet-fellowship, is holiness of heart wrought there by his own indwelling. Follow after holiness as men pursue pleasure; as the athlete runs for the prize; as the votary of fashion follows in the wake of the crowd.

THERE IS OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD MEN. " Follow after peace." The effect of righteousness is always peace. If you are holy, you will be at peace. Peace is broken by sin; but the holy soul takes sin instantly to the Blood. Peace is broken by temptation; but the holy soul has learned to put Christ between itself and the first breath of the tempter. Peace is broken by care, dissatisfaction, and unrest; but the Lord stands around the holy soul, as do the mountains around Jerusalem, which shield off the cruel winds, and collect the rain which streams down their broad sides to make the dwellers in the valleys rejoice and sing. Others may be fretful and feverish, the subjects of wild alarms; but there is perfect peace to the soul which has God, and is satisfied.
When a man is full of the peace of God, he will naturally become a son of peace. He will follow after peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart (2 Tim. ii. 22). He will endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. iv. 3). He will sow harvests of peace as he makes peace (James iii. 18). All his epistles, like those of the great Apostle, will breathe benedictions of peace; and his entrance to a home will seem like a living embodiment of the ancient form of benediction: Peace be to this house. He will have a wonderful power of calling out responses from like-minded men; but where that is not the case, his peace, white-robed and dove-winged, shall come back to him again.
But there must be a definite following after peace. The temperaments of some are so trying. They are so apt to look at things in a wrong light, to put misconstructions on harmless actions, and to stand out on trifles. Hence the need of endeavor and patience and watchfulness, that we may exercise a wholesome influence as peacemakers.

Avoid becoming a party to a quarrel. It takes two to make a quarrel; never be one. A soft answer will often turn away wrath, and where it does not, yield before the wrong-doer, give place to wrath, let it expend itself unhindered by your resistance; it will soon have vented itself, to be succeeded by shame, penitence, and regret.

If opposed to the malice of men, do not avenge yourselves. Our cause is more God's than it is our own. It is for him to vindicate us; and he will. He may permit a temporary cloud to rest on us for some wise purpose; but ultimately he will bring out our righteousness as the light, and our judgment as the noonday. The non-resistance of evil is the dear teaching of Christ (Matt. v.39; Rom. xii. 19; 1 Pet. ii. 21). Stand up for the true, the holy, the good, at all costs; but think very little of standing up for your own rights. What are your rights? Are you anything better than a poor sinner who has forfeited all? You deserve to be treated much worse than you were ever treated at the worst. Leave God to vindicate you.

Do not give cause of offense. If you are aware of certain susceptibilities on the part of others, where they may be easily wounded and irritated, avoid touching them, if you can do so without being a traitor to God's holy truth. And if thy brother has any true bill against you, rest not day nor night, tarry not even at the footstool of divine mercy; but go to him forthwith, and seek his forgiveness, and make ample restitution, that he may have no cause of reproach against thy professions, or against thy Lord (Matt.v.23).
Oh for more of his peace! -in the face never crossed by impatience; in the voice never rising above gentle tones; in the manner never excited or morose; in the gesture still and restful, which acts as oil poured over the raging billows of the sea when they foam around the bulwarks of the ship and are suddenly quelled.

THERE IS OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD OUR FELLOW CHRISTIANS. "Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God." It is a beautiful provision that love to common Lord attracts us into the fellowship of his disciples; and as no individual life truly develops in Solitariness, so no Christian is right or healthy who isolates himself from the communion of saints. But we go not there only for selfish gratification, but that we may look after one another, not leaving it to the officers of the host, but each doing our own share.
There are three dangers. The laggards. This is the meaning of "fail." The idea is borrowed from a party of travelers, some of whom lag behind, as in the retreat from Moscow, to fall a prey to Cossacks, wolves, or the awful sleep. Let us who are in the front ranks, strong and healthy, go back to look after the weaklings who loiter to their peril.

The root of bitterness. There may be some evil root lurking in some heart, hidden now, but which Will bear a terrible harvest of misery to many. So was it in Israel once, when Achan conceived thoughts of covetousness, and brought evil on himself, and mourning on the host whose defeat he had brought about. If we can discover the presence of such roots of bitterness, let us, with much searching of our own souls, humility, and prayer, root them out ere they can spring up to cause trouble.

The profane and early-minded. Of these Esau is the type, "who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright." Alas are there not many such? For one momentary gratification of the flesh, they forfeit not their salvation perhaps (we are not told that even Esau forfeited that); but their power to lead, to teach, to receive and hand on blessing to the Church.
Are any such reading these words? Let them beware! Such choices are sometimes irrevocable. So was it with Esau. He wept and cried like some trapped animal; but he could not alter the destiny he had made for himself. The words "place for repentance" do not refer to his personal salvation, but to the altering of the decision which he had made as a young man, and which his father ratified. He could not undo. What he had written, he had written. And so there may come a time when you would give everything you possess to have again the old power of blessing and helping your fellows; but you will find that for one moment's sensual gratification, the blessed prerogative has slipped from your grasp-never-never-never to return. Wherefore, let us eagerly and diligently look both to ourselves and our fellow-believers in the Church of God.

Study of HEBREWS 12:6

Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."
HEBREWS 12:6.


IT is hardly possible to suppose that any shall read these lines who have not drunk of the bitter cup of affliction. Some may have even endured a great fight of afflictions. Squadron after squadron has been drawn up in array, and broken its regiments on the devoted soul. It has come to us in different forms, but in one form or another it has come to us all. Perhaps our physical strength and health have been weakened in the way; or we have been racked with unutterable anguish in mind or body; or have been obliged to see our beloved slowly slipping from the grasp of our affection, which was condemned to stand paralyzed and helpless by. In some cases, affliction has come to us in the earning of our daily bread, which has been procured with difficulty and pain, whilst care has never been long absent from our hearts, or want from our homes. In others, homes which were as full of merry voices as the woods in spring of sweet-voiced choristers are empty and silent. Ah, how infinite are the shades of grief! how extended the gamut of pain! How many can cry with the Psalmist, "All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me!
We can see clearly the reason of all this suffering. The course of nature is out of joint. Man's sin has put not himself only, but the whole course of nature into collision with the will and law of God; so that it groans and travails in its pains. Selfishness has also alienated man from his fellows, inciting him to amass all that he can lay hands on for himself, oblivious to the bitter sufferings of those around him, and careless of their woes. Whilst behind the whole course of nature there is the incessant activity of malignant spirits, who, as in the case of Job, may be plotting against us, reveling in any mischief, which, for some great reasons, they are permitted to work to our hurt.
There are different ways in which affliction may be borne. Some despise it (ver. 5). They refuse to acknowledge any reason in themselves for its infliction. They reject the lesson it was designed to teach. They harden themselves in stoical indifference, resolving to bear it with defiant and desperate courage. Some faint under it (ver. 5). They become despondent and dispirited, or lose heart and hope. Like Pliable, they are soon daunted, and get out of the Slough of Despond with as little cost as possible to themselves; or, like Timorous and Mistrust, turn back from the lion's roar. We ought to be in subjection. Lifting the cup meekly and submissively to our lips; calmly and trustfully saying "Amen"to every billow and wave; lovingly trying to learn the lesson written on the page of trial; and bowing ourselves as the reeds of the river's edge to the sweeping hurricane of trial. But this, though the only true and safe course, is by no means an easy one.
Subjection in affliction is only possible when we can see in it the hand of the Father of spirits (ver. 9). So long as we look at the second causes, at men or things, as being the origin and source of our sorrows, we shall be filled alternately with burning indignation and hopeless grief. But when we come to understand that nothing can happen to us except as our Father permits, and that, though our trials may originate in some lower source, yet they become God's will for us as soon as they are permitted to reach us through the defense of his environing presence, then we smile through our tears; we kiss the dear hand that uses another as its rod; we realize that each moment's pain originates in our Father's heart; and we are at rest. Judas may seem to mix the cup, and put it to our lips; but it is nevertheless the cup which our Father giveth us to drink, and shall we not drink it? Much of the anguish passes away from life's trials as soon as we discern our Father's hand; then------
Affliction becomes chastisement. There is a great difference between these two. Affliction may come from a malignant and unfriendly source; chastisement is the work of the Father, yearning over his little children, desiring to eliminate from their characters all that is unlovely and unholy, and to secure in them entire conformity to his character and will. But, before you can appropriate the comfort of these words, let me earnestly ask you, my reader, whether you are a child? None are children in the sense of which we are speaking now, save those who have been born into the divine family by regeneration, through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Of this birth, faith is the sure sign and token; for it is written: "Those that believe on his name are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Are you a child? Does the Spirit witness with your spirit that you are born of God? Can you look up into his face and cry, "Abba, Father"? If so, you are surrounded by your Father's tender, loving care. Nothing can reach you without passing through the cordon of his protection. If, therefore, affliction does lay its rough hand upon your arm, ;arresting you, then be sure that it must first have obtained permission from One who loves you infinitely, and who is willing to expose both you and himself to pain because of the vast profit on which he has set his heart.
All chastisement has a Purpose. There is nothing so absolutely crushing in sorrow as to feel one's self drifting at the mercy of some chance wave, sweeping forward to an unknown shore. But a great calm settles down upon us when we realize that life is a schoolhouse, in which we are being taught by our Father himself, who sets our lessons as he sees we require them. The drill-sergeant has a purpose in every exercise; the professor of music, an object in every scale; the farmer, an end in every method of husbandry. "He does not thresh fitches with a sharp threshing instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod." So God has a purpose in every pain he permits us to feel. There is nothing fortuitous or empirical or capricious in his dealings with his own.
The purposes which chastisement subserves are very various. Of course we know that the penalty of our sins has been laid on the head of our great Substitute; and that, therefore, we are forever relieved from their penal consequences. But though that is so, yet often chastisement follows on our wrong-doing; not that we expiate the wrong-doing by suffering, but that we may be compelled to regard it in its true light. Amid the pain we suffer we are compelled to review our past. The carelessness, the unwatchfulness, the prayerlessness which have been working within us pass slowly before our minds. We see where we had been going astray for long months or years. We discover how deeply and incessantly we had been grieving God's Holy Spirit. We find that an alienation had been widening the breach between God and our souls, which, if it had proceeded further, must have involved moral ruin. Perhaps we never see our true character until the light dies off the landscape, and the clouds overcast the sky, and the wind rises moaningly about the house of our life.
Times of affliction lead to heart-searchings, and we become increasingly aware of sins of which we had hardly thought at all. And even though the offense may be confessed and put away, so long as affliction lasts there is a subdued temper of heart and mind, which is most favorable to religious growth. We cannot forget our sin so long as the stroke of the Almighty lies on our soul; and we are compelled to maintain a habit of holy watchfulness against its recurrence.
It is also in affliction that we learn that fellowship with the sufferings of Christ and that sympathy for others which are so lovely in true Christians. That is not the loftiest type of character which, like the Chinese pictures, has no background of shadow. Even Christ could only learn obedience by the things that he suffered, or become a perfect High-Priest by the ordeal of temptation. And how little can we enter into the inner depths of his soul, unless we tread the shadowed paths, or lie prostrate in the secluded glades of Gethsemane! We who attempt to assuage the griefs of mankind must ourselves be acquainted with grief, and become men of sorrows.
Be sure, then, that not one moment's pain is given you to bear that could have been dispensed with. Each has been the subject of divine consideration before permitted to come, and each will be removed directly its needed mission is fulfilled.
Special discipline is evidence of special love (ver. 6). It costs us much less to fling our superfluities on those we love than to cause them pain. Indulgence is a sign not of intense but of slender love. The heart that really and wisely loves will bear the pain of causing pain, will incur the risk of being misjudged, will not flinch from misrepresentation and reproach; from all of which a less affection would warily shrink. It is because our Father loves us that he chastens us. He would not take so much trouble over us if we were not dear to his heart. It is because we are sons that he sets himself to scourge us. But oh, how much he suffers as he wields that scourge of small cords! Yet, hail each blow; for each sting and smart cries to thee that thou art being received into the inner circle of love.
When suppliants for his healing help came to our Lord, for the most part he hastened to their side. But on one occasion he lingered yet two days in the place where he was. He dared to face the suspicion of neglect and the loving impeachment of bereaved love, because he loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. He loved them too much to be satisfied with doing small things for them, or revealing only fragments of his great glory. He longed to enrich them with his precious revelation of resurrection life. But his end could only be reached at the cost of untold sorrow, even unto death. Lazarus must die, and lie for two days in the grave, before his mightiest miracle could be wrought. And so he let the thunder-cloud break on the home lie loved, that he might be able to flash on it light which broke into a rainbow of prismatic glory.
If you are signally visited with suffering, such as you cannot connect with persistence in carelessness or neglect, then take it that you are one of Heaven's favorites. It is not, as men think, the child of fortune and earthly grace, dowered with gifts in prodigal profusion, who is best beloved of God; but oftenest the child of poverty and pain and misfortune and heart-break. "If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then ye are bastards and not sons." Oh, ye who escape the rod, begin seriously to ask whether indeed ye be born again!

Pain is fraught with precious results (vv. 10, ii). " Not joyous but grievous: nevertheless afterward." How full of meaning is the "afterward." Who shall estimate the hundredfold of blessing from each moment of pain? The Psalms are crystallized tears. The Epistles were in many cases written in prison. The greatest teachers of mankind have learned their most helpful lessons in sorrow's school. The noblest characters have been forged in a furnace. Acts which will live forever, masterpieces of art and music and literature, have originated in ages of storm and tempest and heart-rending agony. And so also is it with our earthly discipline. The ripest results are sorrow-born. "The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."
Holiness is the product of sorrow, when sanctified by the grace of God. Not that sorrow necessarily makes us holy, because that is the prerogative of the divine Spirit; and, as a matter of fact, many sufferers are hard and complaining and unlovely. But that sorrow predisposes us to turn from the distractions of earth to receive those influences of the grace of God which are most operative where the soul is calm and still, sitting in a veiled and darkened room, whilst suffering plies body or mind. Who of us does not feel willing to suffer, if only this precious result shall accrue, that we may be "partakers of his holiness" ?
Fruit is another product (ver. 11). Where, think you, does the Husbandman of souls most often see the fruit he loves so well, and hear the tones of deepest trust? Not where his gifts are most profuse, but where they are most meager. Not within the halls of successful ambition or satiated luxury, but in cottages of poverty, and rooms dedicated to ceaseless pain. Genial almost to a miracle is the soil of sorrow. Necessary beyond all count is the pruning-knife of pain.
Count, if you will, the precious kinds of fruit. There is patience, which endures the Father's will; and trust that sees the Father's hand behind the rough disguise; and peace, that lies still, content with the Father's plan; and righteousness, that conforms itself to the Father's requirements; and love, that clings more closely than ever to the Father's heart; and gentleness, which deals leniently with others, because of what we have learned of ourselves.
Nor is it for very long. Jesus, who endured the cross and shame and spitting, is now set down on the right hand of the throne of God. Ere long we too shall come out of the great tribulation, to sit by his side. Every tear kissed away; every throb of anguish stayed; every memory of pain allayed by God's anodyne of bliss. The results will be ours forever. But sorrow and sighing, which may have been our daily comrades to the gates of the celestial city, will flee away as we step across its threshold, unable to exist in that radiant glory. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain." "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." "Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the feeble knees."