REFLECTIONS

His Wounds

“April 23, Evening

“Lo, in the midst of the throne...stood a Lamb as it had been slain.” – Revelation 5:6

“Why should our exalted Lord appear in His wounds in glory? The wounds of Jesus are His glories, His jewels, His sacred ornaments. To the eye of the believer, Jesus is passing fair because He is ‘white and ruddy’—white with innocence, and ruddy with His own blood. We see Him as the lily of matchless purity, and as the rose crimsoned with His own gore. Christ is lovely upon Olivet and Tabor, and by the sea, but oh! there never was such a matchless Christ as He that did hang upon the cross. There we beheld all His beauties in perfection, all His attributes developed, all His love drawn out, all His character expressed. Beloved, the wounds of Jesus are far more fair in our eyes than all the splendour and pomp of kings. The thorny crown is more than an imperial diadem. It is true that He bears not now the sceptre of reed, but there was a glory in it that never flashed from sceptre of gold. Jesus wears the appearance of a slain Lamb as His court dress in which He wooed our souls, and redeemed them by His complete atonement. Nor are these only the ornaments of Christ: they are the trophies of His love and of His victory. He has divided the spoil with the strong. He has redeemed for Himself a great multitude whom no man can number, and these scars are the memorials of the fight. Ah! if Christ thus loves to retain the thought of His sufferings for His people, how precious should His wounds be to us!”

“Behold how every wound of His

A precious balm distils,

Which heals the scars that sin had made,

And cures all mortal ills.

“Those wounds are mouths that preach His grace;

The ensigns of His love;

The seals of our expected bliss

In paradise above.””

-From, Morning and Evening, Charles H. Spurgeon (Massachusetts; Hendrickson Publishers); page 229.

REFLECTIONS

He Saved Us Alone

“Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone.” –John 16:32

Few had fellowship with the sorrows of Gethsemane. The majority of the disciples were not sufficiently advanced in grace to be admitted to behold the mysteries of “the agony.” Occupied with the passover feast at their own houses, they represent the many who live upon the letter, but are mere babes as to the spirit of the gospel. To twelve, nay, to eleven only was the privilege given to enter Gethsemane and see “this great sight.” Out of the eleven, eight were left at a distance; they had fellowship, but not of that intimate sort to which men greatly beloved are admitted. Only three highly favoured ones could approach the veil of our Lord’s mysterious sorrow: within that veil even these must not intrude; a stone’s-cast distance must be left between. He must tread the wine-press alone, and of the people there must be none with Him. Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, represent the few eminent, experienced saints, who may be written down as “Fathers;” these having done business on great waters, can in some degree measure the huge Atlantic waves of their Redeemer’s passion. To some selected spirits it is given, for the good of others, and to strengthen them for future, special, and tremendous conflict, to enter the inner circle and hear the pleadings of the suffering High Priest; they have fellowship with Him in His sufferings, and are made conformable unto His death. Yet even these cannot penetrate the secret places of the Saviour’s woe. “Thine unknown sufferings” is the remarkable expression of the Greek liturgy: there was an inner chamber in our Master’s grief, shut out from human knowledge and fellowship. There Jesus is “left alone.”  Here Jesus was more than ever an “Unspeakable gift!” Is not Watts right when he sings—

                “And all the unknown joys he gives,

                Were bought with agonies unknown.”

-From, Morning and Evening, Charles H. Spurgeon (Massachusetts; Hendrickson Publishers); page 162.

REFLECTIONS

God’s Trusted Providence

“January 22

The birds of the air

Matthew 6:26”

“Behold the fowls of the air. Here is an argument taken from God’s providence towards the inferior creatures, and their dependence, according to their capacities, upon that providence. Look upon the fowls, and learn to trust God for food (v.26), and disquiet not yourselves with thoughts of what you shall eat.

            Observe the providence of God concerning them. Look upon them and receive instruction. There are various sorts of fowls; they are numerous, some of them ravenous, but they are all fed; it is rare that any of them perish for want of food, even in winter. The fowls, as they are least as service to man, so they are least within his care; men often feed upon them, but seldom feed them; yet they are fed, we know not how, and some of them fed best in the hardest weather; and it is your heavenly Father that feeds them.

            But that which is especially observed here is, that they are fed without any care or project of their own; they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. The ant indeed does, and the bee, and they are set before us as examples of prudence and industry; but the fowls of the air do not; they make no provision for the future themselves, and yet every day, as duly as the day comes, provision is made for them, and their eyes wait on God.

            Improve this for your encouragement to trust in God. Are you not better than they? Yes, certainly you are. The heirs of heaven are much better than the fowls of heaven; nobler and more excellent beings, and, by faith, they soar higher; they are of a better nature and nurture. You are dearer to God, and nearer, though they fly in the open firmament of heaven. He is their Maker and Lord, their Owner and Master; but besides all this, he is your Father, and in his account ye are of more value than many sparrows; you are his children, his first-born; now he that feeds his birds surely will not starve his babes. They trust your Father’s providence, and will not you trust it?”

-Matthew Henry  1662-1714  Minister and Author  From, A Closer Walk with God; daily readings from Matthew Henry; compiled by Martin Manser; (Daybreak Books—Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids; 1987), Page 19.

REFLECTIONS

God’s Plan

God does not work without a plan! God has not left the world to chance.

There are some men who are always kicking against the plan of an eternal purpose, and who grow angry if you assert that God has settled what shall occur.

It is by the consent of all agreed that men are foolish if they work without a plan, and yet they cry out when we insist that God also, in all His working, is fulfilling a well arranged plan.

Depend upon it, however, let men rebel against this truth as they will, that God has determined the end from the beginning. He has left no screw loose in the machine, He has left nothing to chance or accident.

Nothing with God is the subject of an “if” or a “peradventure,” but even the agency of man, free as it is, as untouched and undisturbed as if there were no God, even this is guided by His mysterious power, and works out thoroughly His own purpose in every jot and tittle.

God wings the thunderbolt, and shall he not guide the most passionate spirit? God puts a bit in the mouth of the whirlwind, and shall He not control the most ambitious will?

God takes care that even the sea shall come no farther than He bids it, and shall not the heart of man be equally subject to the Divine purpose?

Yielding to man his free agency, giving to him his responsibility, leaving him as free as if there were no purpose and no decree, yet the eternal Jehovah works out His plans, and achieves His purpose to the praise of His glory.

Everything that has moved or shall move in heaven, and earth, and hell, has been, is, and shall be according to the counsel and foreknowledge of God, fulfilling a holy, just, wise, and unalterable purpose!

God is wonderful in His design and excellent in His working. Believer, God rules over all things for your good. The needs-be for all that you have suffered, has been most accurately determined by God.

Your course is all mapped out by your Lord. Nothing will take Him by surprise. There will be no novelties to Him. There will be no occurrences which He did not foresee, and for which, therefore, He has not provided. He has arranged all, and you have but to patiently wait, and you shall sing a song of deliverance.

Your life has been arranged on the best possible principles, so that if you had been gifted with unerring wisdom, you would have arranged a life for yourselves exactly similar to the one through which you have passed.

Let us trust God where we cannot trace Him.

In the end we shall read the whole of God’s purpose as one grand poem, and there will not be one verse in it that has a syllable too much, or a word too little. There will not be one stanza or letter redundant, much less one that is erased. But from the beginning to the end we shall see the master pen and the master-mind drawing forth the glorious array of majestic thoughts. And with angels, and seraphs, and principalities, and powers—shall burst forth into one mighty song:

“Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent reigns!” We shall see how from the first even to the last, the King has been ruling all things according to His own will.

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon  1834-1892  British Prince of Preachers

REFLECTIONS

Downward Drift

“January 23

 

Genesis 24; Matthew 23; Nehemiah 13; Acts 23

One of the most striking evidences of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues. But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience, and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations.

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we drift toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

That is the sort of situation Nehemiah faces toward the end of his leadership in Jerusalem (Neh. 13). He has been away for a time, required by his responsibilities toward the Emperor Artaxerxes to return to the capital. When he comes back to Jerusalem for a second term as governor, he finds that commercial interests have superseded Sabbath discipline, that compromise with the surrounding pagans has displaced covenantal faithfulness, that greed has withheld some of the stipend of the clergy, and therefore their numbers and usefulness have been reduced, and that some combination of indiscipline and sheer stupidity has admitted to the temple and to the highest councils of power men like Tobiah and Sanballat, who have no interest in faithfulness toward God and his Word.

By an extraordinary combination of exhortation, command, and executive action, Nehemiah restores covenantal discipline. Doubtless many of the godly breathe a sigh of relief and thank God for him; no less certainly, many others grumble that he is a busybody, a killjoy, a narrow-minded legalist. Our permissive and relativizing culture fits more comfortably into the latter group than the former—but that says more about our culture than about Nehemiah.

Genuine reformation and revival have never occurred in the church apart from leaders for whom devotion to God is of paramount importance. If, absorbing the values of the ambient culture, the Western church becomes suspicious of such leaders, or else reacts with knee-jerk cultural conservatism that is as devoid of biblical integrity as the compromise opposes, we are undone. May God have mercy on us and send us prophetic leaders.”

-From, For the Love of God; Volume Two, D.A. Carson

REFLECTIONS

“AN INTRODUCTION TO THE EXPOSITION OF THE LORD’S PRAYER; Mat. VI. 6-8.”

“3. He is such a Father as is not unwilling to relieve us. Your heavenly Father is very ready to give you such things as you stand in need of, as Christ expresseth it, Mat.  vii. 11, ‘If ye, being evil, know how to give good things unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him?’ And Luke xi. 13, it is, ‘How much more shall your heavenly Father give his Holy Spirit?’ When you come to beg for grace, consider what earthly parents would do for a child. Their affections are limited, they are in part corrupt; and poor straightened creatures have not such bowels of compassion as God; and yet, when a child comes to them with a genuine cry, with a sense of his want and confidence of his father, he cannot harden his bowels against his child. This also checks much speaking; for we do not pray to stir up mercy in him, as if he needed much entreaty, and were severe, and delighted to put the creature to penance. No, he is ready before we ask; he knows our wants and needs, and is ready to supply us with those things we stand in need of, only will have this comely order observed. Sometimes he prevents our prayers before we ask: ‘Before they call, I will answer; and I am found of them that sought me not.’ Before we can have a heart to come, the Lord prevents us with his blessing. And sometimes he gives us what we ask. This is the condescension of God, that when you call he will answer; and when you cry, he doth in his providence say, ‘What will you have, poor creatures?’ And he gives more than we ask; as Solomon asked wisdom, and God gave him more than he asked—wisdom, riches, and honour.

“Object. But here is an objection. These notions seem not only to exclude long prayer and much speaking, but all prayer. If God know our wants and is so ready to give, whether we ask or no, what need we open them to him in prayer at all?

“I answer, it is God’s prescribed course, and that should be enough to gracious hearts that will be obedient to their Father. Whatever he intends, though he knows our wants and resolves to answer them, yet it is a piece of religious manners to ask what he is about to give: Jer.  xxix. 11, ‘I know my thoughts towards you, thoughts of peace, yet will I be inquired of you for these things.’ God knows his own thoughts, hath stated his decrees, and will not alter the beautiful course of his providence for our sakes, yet he will be sought unto. So Ezek.  xxxvi.: God purposed to bless them, and therefore promiseth, ‘I will do thus and thus for you’; yet, verse 37, ‘I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them.’ I will do it, but you shall milk out the blessing by prayer. This course is also necessary, and that both for his honour, and our profit and comfort.”   

-From The Works of Thomas Manton; Volume 1 (The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh and PA; page 29)

REFLECTIONS

“A PSALM FOR THE NEW YEAR” 

“’But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and forever. Amen.’ 2 Peter 3:18.” 

“BEHOLD, beloved, our perpetual dangers. Where can we go to escape from peril? Where shall we fly to avoid temptation? If we venture into business, worldliness is there. If we retire to our homes, trials are there. One would have imagined that in the green pastures of the Word of God there would have been perfect security for God’s sheep. Surely no lion shall be there, and no ravenous beast shall go up from there! Alas, it is not so, for even while we are reading the Bible we are still exposed to peril. Not that the truth of God is dangerous, but that our corrupt hearts can find poison in the very flowers of Paradise! Mark what our apostle says of the writings of St. Paul, ‘Where in are some things which are hard to be understood.’ And mark the danger to which we are exposed, lest we, being unlearned and unstable, should wrest even the Word of God itself to our own destruction. With the Bible before our eyes, we may still commit sin; pondering over the hallowed words of inspiration we may receive a deadly wound from ‘the error of the wicked.’ Even at the horns of the altar, we need that God should still cover us with the shadow of His wings. It is a very pleasing reflection that our gracious Father has provided a shield by which we may be sheltered from every evil, and in our text the evil of heterodoxy finds a suitable preventative. We are in danger, lest misinterpreting Scripture we should make God say what He does not; and lest by departing from the teaching of the Holy Spirit we should wrest the letter of the Word and lose its spirit, and from the letter draw a meaning which may be for our soul’s ruin. How shall we escape this? Peter, speaking by the Holy Spirit, has in the words before us, pointed out our safeguard! While we search the Scriptures and grow in acquaintance with them, see to it that we grow in divine grace; and while we desire to know the doctrine, long above all to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; and let our study of Scripture, and our growth in divine grace and in the knowledge of Christ, still be subservient to that higher objective, that we may live to bring glory both now and forever to Him who has loved us and bought us with His blood! Let our hearts say evermore, ‘Amen’ to the doxology of praise, so shall we be kept from all pestilent errors, and we shall not fall ‘from our own steadfastness.’ It appears, then, that our text is adapted to be a heavenly remedy for certain diseases to which even students of Scripture are exposed; and I am persuaded it may also serve as a most blessed directory to us through the whole of the coming year.”

-A PSALM FOR THE NEW YEAR NO. 427, A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 5, 1862, BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.