Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.”
Hebrews 5:8
We are told that the Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering, therefore we who are far from being perfect, must not wonder if we are called to pass through suffering too.
Shall the head be crowned with thorns, and shall the other members of the body be rocked upon the dainty lap of ease?
Must Christ pass through seas of his own blood to win the crown, and are we to walk to heaven dryshod in silver slippers?
No, our Master’s experience teaches us that suffering is necessary, and the trueborn child of God must not, would not, escape it if he might.
But there is one very comforting thought in the fact of Christ’s being made perfect through suffering—it is, that he can have complete sympathy with us.
He is not an high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
In this sympathy of Christ we find a sustaining power.
One of the early martyrs said, “I can bear it all, for Jesus suffered, and he suffers in me now; he sympathizes with me, and this makes me strong.”
Believer, lay hold of this thought in all times of agony. Let the thought of Jesus strengthen you as you follow in his steps.
Find a sweet support in his sympathy; and remember that, to suffer is an honourable thing—to suffer for Christ is glory.
The apostles rejoiced that they were counted worthy to do this.
Just so far as the Lord shall give us grace to suffer for Christ, to suffer with Christ, just so far does he honour us.
The jewels of a Christian are his afflictions. The regalia of the kings whom God hath anointed are their troubles, their sorrows, and their griefs.
Let us not, therefore, shun being honoured. Let us not turn aside from being exalted. Griefs exalt us, and troubles lift us up. If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.
~Charles Spurgeon~
Mat 6:28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
Many years ago there was a monk who needed olive oil, so he planted an olive tree sapling. After he finished planting it, he prayed, “Lord, my tree needs rain so its tender roots may drink and grow. Send gentle showers.”And the Lord sent gentle showers.
Then the monk prayed,“Lord,my tree needs sun. Please send it sun.”And the sun shone, gilding the once-dripping clouds.
Now send frost, dear Lord, to strengthen its branches, cried the monk. And soon the little tree was covered in sparkling frost, but by evening it had died.
Then the monk sought out a brother monk in his cell and told him of his strange experience. After hearing the story, the other monk said,“I also have planted a little tree. See how it is thriving! But I entrust my tree to its God.
He who made it knows better than a man like me what it needs. I gave God no constraints or conditions, except to pray, ‘Lord, send what it needs***whether that be a storm or sunshine,wind,rain, or frost. You made it, and you know best what it needs.
Yes, leave it with Him, The lilies all do, And they grow—They grow in the rain, And they grow in the dew—Yes, they grow: They grow in the darkness, all hid in the night—They grow in the sunshine, revealed by the light—Still they grow.
Yes, leave it with Him, It’s more dear to His heart, You will know, Than the lilies that bloom, Or the flowers that start Neath the snow:
Whatever you need, if you seek it in prayer, You can leave it with Him—for you are His care. You, you know.
~Selected~
GOD is our refuge and strength.” And in the varied conflicts and perils of life we need both these resources.
We need the “refuge.” There are times when our mightiest warfare is to lie passive, to shelter quietly in the strong defences of our God.
Our finest strategy is sometimes to “rest in the Lord and wait.”
We can slay some of our enemies by leaving them alone.
We can “starve them out.” They can be weakened and beaten by sheer neglect.
We feed their strength, and give them favoured chances, if we go out and face them actively, “marching as to war.” The best way is to hide, and keep quiet; and “God is our refuge.”
But we also need the “strength.” This is positive equipment for active service. The defensive is changed to the offensive, and in the “strength” of the Lord we advance against the foe.
We “ride abroad, redressing human wrongs.” We “tread upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon we trample under foot.” We meet our enemy on the open field, and we slay him in his pride!
And so our God is our resource in the double warfare of active and passive crusade.
In Him we can take refuge, and the enemy withers.
In Him we can find fighting strength, and the enemy is overthrown.
~John Henry Jowett~
Act 7:30 And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.
Act 7:31 When Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight: and as he drew near to behold it, the voice of the Lord came unto him,
Act 7:32 Saying, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Then Moses trembled, and durst not behold.
Act 7:33 Then said the Lord to him, Put off thy shoes from thy feet: for the place where thou standest is holy ground.
Act 7:34 I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt.
Forty years was a long time to wait in preparation for a great
mission.Yet when God delays, He is not inactive.This is when
He prepares His instruments and matures our strength.Then
at the appointed time we will rise up and be equal to our task.
Even Jesus of Nazareth had thirty years of privacy, growing in
wisdom before He began His work.
~John Henry Jowett~
God is never in a hurry. He spends years preparing those He plans to greatly use, and never thinks of the days of preparation
as being too long or boring.
The most difficult ingredient of suffering is often time.
A short, sharp pain is easily endured, but when a sorrow drags on its long and weary way year after monotonous year, returning
day after day with the same dull routine of hopeless agony, the
heart loses its strength.Without the grace of God, the heart is sure to sink into dismal despair.
Joseph endured a long trial, and God often has to burn the lessons he learned into the depths of our being, using the fires
of prolonged pain. “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver”
(Mal. 3:3), yet He knows the specific amount of time that will be needed.
Like a true goldsmith, God stops the fire the moment He sees His image in the glowing metal.
Today we may be unable to see the final outcome of the beautiful plan that God has hidden “in the shadow of his hand” (Isa.49:2).
It may be concealed for a very long time, but our faith may rest in the assurance that God is still seated on His throne.
Because of this assurance,we can calmly await the time when, in heavenly delight, we will say, “All things [have] work[ed] together for good” (Rom. 8:28 KJV).
As Joseph did,we should be more careful to focus on learning all the lessons in the school of sorrow than to focus anxious eyes toward the time of our deliverance.
There is a reason behind every lesson, and when we are ready, our deliverance will definitely come.Then we will know we could never have served in our place of higher service without having been taught the very things we learned during our ordeal.
God is in the process of educating us for future service and greater blessings. And if we have gained the qualities that make us ready for a throne, nothing will keep us from it once His timing is right.
Don’t steal tomorrow from God’s hands. Give Him time to speak to you and reveal His will. He is never late***learn to wait.
~Selected~
He never shows up late; He knows just what is best; Fret not yourself in vain; until He comes just REST.
Never run impulsively ahead of the Lord. Learn to await His timing***the second, minute, and hour hand must all point to the precise moment for action.
Heb 13:5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
These words are very simple. A little child might easily understand them.
They contain no high doctrine; they involve no deep metaphysical question; and yet, as simple as they are the duty which these words enjoin on us, is of highest practical importance to all Christians.
Contentment is one of the rarest graces. Like all precious things it is most uncommon.
To practice contentment, is very hard.
To talk of contentment in the day of health and prosperity is easy enough; but to be content in the midst of poverty, sickness, trouble, disappointments, and losses is a state of mind to which very few can attain!
The fallen angels had heaven itself to dwell in, and the immediate presence and favor of God but they were not content.
Adam and Eve had the garden of Eden to live in, with a free grant of everything in it excepting one tree but they were not content.
Ahab had his throne and kingdom, but so long as Naboth's vineyard was not his he was not content.
Haman was the chief favorite of the Persian king but so long as Mordecai sat at the gate he was not content.
It is just the same everywhere in the present day. Murmuring, dissatisfaction, discontent with what we have, meet us at every turn.
To say, with Jacob, "I have enough," seems flatly contrary to the grain of human nature.
To say, "I want more," seems the mother tongue of every child of Adam.
Paul's direction ought to come with power to all our consciences: Be content with such things as you have, not with such things as you once used to have not with such things as you hope to have but with such things as you now have.
With such things, whatever they may be we are to be content.
With such a dwelling, such a family, such health, such income, such work, such circumstances as we now have we are to be content.
Ah! reader, if you would be truly happy seek it where alone it can be found. Seek it not in money, seek it not in pleasure, nor in friends, nor in learning.
Seek it in having a will in perfect harmony with the will of God. Seek it in studying to be content.
You may say, that is fine talking but how can we be always content in such a world?
I answer, that you need to cast away your pride, and know your deserts, in order to be thankful in any condition.
If men really knew that they deserve nothing, and are debtors to God's mercy every day they would soon cease to complain.
Let me tell you why there is so little contentment in the world. The simple answer is, because there is so little grace, and true godliness.
Few know their own sin; few feel their desert; and so few are content with such things as they have.
Humility, self-knowledge, a clear sight of our own utter vileness and corruption; these are the true roots of contentment.
Let me tell you what you should do, if you would be content.
You must know your own heart, seek God for your portion, take Christ for your Savior, and use God's Word for your daily food.
Contentment must be learned at the feet of Jesus Christ.
He who has God for his friend, and heaven for his home can wait for his good things, and be content with little here below.
~J. C. Ryle~
And this is the disciple who had been surnamed “The Rock”! Our Lord looked into the morrow, and He saw Simon’s character, compacted by grace and discipline into a texture tough and firm as granite.
But there is not much granite here! Peter is yet loose and yielding; more like a bending reed than an unshakable rock. A servant girl whispers, and his timid heart flings a lie to his lips and he denies his Lord.
Peter denied the Master, not because he coveted money, but because he feared men. He was not seeking crowns, but escaping frowns. He was not clutching at a garland, but avoiding a sword.
It was not avarice but cowardice which determined his ways. He shrank from crucifixion! He saw a possible cross, and with a great lie he passed by on the other side.
But the Lord has not done with Peter. He is still “in the making.” Some day he will justify his new name.
Some day we shall find it written: “When they saw the boldness of Peter, they marvelled”! Once a maid could make him tremble. Now he can stand in high places, “steadfast and unmovable”!
From the spirit of cowardice and from all temporising, and from the unholy fear of man, deliver me, good Lord!
~John Henry Jowett~
Now I come to Isaiah 36 and 37. You
notice that that passage about the remnant taking root is an issue.
Chapter 36
we have heard read this evening, about Rabshakeh and Sennacherib with his
boasting, flaunting, high-faluting utterances, challenging not just Hezekiah and
the Jews, but their God.
Vaunting himself against Jehovah, saying that there has
been no god of any of the peoples of the earth who has been able to stand before
his master, and certainly the God of the Jews will not be able to stand; and
there they are outside the gates of Jerusalem with all this.
Why did the Lord
allow it? The Lord saw the first movement in far away Assyria, toward Jerusalem;
why didn’t He stop them, intervene for the sake of His own, and circumvent?
Why
did He not raise up circumstances that would hinder? Why did He allow them
actually to encamp round and lay siege to Jerusalem, and then allow them to say
these things?
It is all in the sovereignty of God. God
has allowed this. God has permitted this thing to come right up to this present
point.
Hezekiah received the letter and rent his clothes, put on sackcloth, and
went and spread the letter before the Lord. They were surely in straits.
The
Lord has allowed, we might even say drawn out, Sennacherib and the mighty hosts
of the Assyrians, drawn them out literally, drawn them out materially, drawn
them out mentally, drawn them out verbally, extended them, allowed them to
inflate themselves to bursting point: they are exalted to the very heavens in
their own eyes.
All right, the Lord has drawn them out.
A remnant comes into view and the remnant shall take root.
When the Assyrian and Sennacherib have gone just as far as it is possible for them to go, have become
as inflated as it is possible for them to be, when they have swelled to the very heavens, the Lord for His remnant’s sake sent one angel!
Surely, the Lord wants
a mighty host to deal with this situation – “And the angel of the Lord went
forth.”
Do you see, beloved, a New Testament
factor in this?
The adversary would impress the weak saints of the Lord with his
importance, with his greatness.
There is one thing the enemy is always trying to
do as a strategic thing and that is to put fear in the heart of a child of God.
Fear. There is nothing so weakening, so devastating as fear. If the enemy can
get fear into our hearts he has got the city and he will make a great display
and vaunt himself and try to impress upon us how mighty he is.
It is never for us to under-estimate the
power of the enemy, but we have always got to keep the balance of comparison
between our God and the enemy.
The Lord’s weakness is more than a match for all
the power of Satan.
And it comes to this, the remnant puts its faith in the Lord
over against all the fury of the oppressor, all the vaunting of the oppressor,
and then the Lord proves He only allowed the oppressor to come out in that
extreme way to show that the remnant cannot be destroyed, for the remnant takes
root in the presence of Sennacherib, in the presence of the Assyrians.
And the
remnant… shall again take root.You see that is the ultimate issue.
This was
looking on to a coming day, it is true, but it is remarkable that these two
things come together, that the Assyrians come into view with all their power and
they are only allowed eventually to destroy that which is not counting for God,
but God gets, in spite of everything, a remnant with roots.
~T. Austin Sparks~
Beware of light thoughts of sin.
At the time of conversion, the conscience is so tender, that we are afraid of the slightest sin.
Young converts have a holy timidity, a godly fear lest they should offend against God.
But alas! very soon the fine bloom upon these first ripe fruits is removed by the rough handling of the surrounding world: the sensitive plant of young piety turns into a willow in after life, too pliant, too easily yielding.
It is sadly true, that even a Christian may grow by degrees so callous, that the sin which once startled him does not alarm him in the least.
By degrees men get familiar with sin. The ear in which the
cannon has been booming will not notice slight sounds. At first a little sin startles us; but soon we say, “Is it not a little one?”
Then there comes another, larger, and then another, until by degrees we begin to regard sin as but a little ill.
And then follows an unholy presumption: “We have not fallen into open sin. True, we tripped a little, but we stood upright in
the main. We may have uttered one unholy word, but as for the most of our conversation, it has been consistent.”
So we palliate sin; we throw a cloak over it; we call it by dainty names.
Christian, beware how thou thinkest lightly of sin. Take heed lest thou fall by little and little.
Sin, a little thing? Is it not a poison? Who knows its deadliness? Sin, a little thing? Do not the little foxes spoil the grapes? Doth not the tiny coral insect build a rock which wrecks a navy? Do not little strokes fell lofty oaks? Will not continual droppings wear away stones?
Sin, a little thing? It girded the Redeemer’s head with thorns, and pierced his heart! It made him suffer anguish, bitterness, and woe.
Could you weigh the least sin in the scales of eternity, you would fly from it as from a serpent, and abhor the least appearance of evil.
Look upon all sin as that which crucified the Saviour, and you will see it to be “exceeding sinful.”
~Charles Spurgeon~
In Revelation 2:5, Christ gives us a word that lets us know we had better take heed. He says, “Repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick.”
Jesus is saying here that unless we repent, He is going to remove all the spiritual authority we have been given. This includes our impact on our city, our community, our neighborhood, those anywhere in our sphere of influence.
Every bit of influence we have will be taken from us.
Right now, churches across the world are shutting their doors. Their lights are literally being turned out because that is the judgment they incur for refusing to repent.
God said they would lose their discernment, their spiritual
blessings, their finances, His very presence.
Now they are dead, lifeless, with only memories of His past blessings.
I preached in many such churches thirty years ago. At that time they were packed with zealous believers while today barely a few dozen people sit in their pews.
Soon they will dwindle to nothing and their doors will shut for
good. God has written “Ichabod” over their doors, which means, “The Spirit of the Lord has departed!”
Yet, beloved, God gives this same message to every Christian individually.
He says, “If you refuse to repent—if you remain in your apathy—I will remove your lampstand. You will no longer have any influence over your family, your coworkers—or anyone!”
Even as we read these words, we are not to fear. Jesus ends His admonition to us this way: “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7).
Dear saint, Jesus is that tree! He is telling us, “If you will repent, I will give you constant life from My very being.
And as long as you continue to love Me, I will provide a flow of supernatural life in you. This life will be revealed in your discernment, your love for people, your good works for My kingdom!”
This is the trait that distinguishes every Christian who is truly in love with Jesus.
Jesus promises that your godly sorrow, your repentant heart and your renewed love for Him will lead you to life.
So, pray to Him right now: “Lord, give me a truly repentant heart.
Take me back to who I was when I was first in love with
You. Yet, this time take me deeper in You than I have ever been before.”
As you repent, God’s Spirit will begin to produce in you a new revelation of the glory of Christ and He will make it known to everyone around you!
~David Wilkerson~
The sufferings of Jesus Christ might be set forth by some other figure, but his death on the cross requires the mention of blood.
Our Lord
was not only bruised and smitten, but he was put to death. His heart's blood
was made to flow.
He of whom we speak was God over all, blessed for ever;
but he condescended to take our manhood into union with his Godhead in a
mysterious manner.
He was born at
Bethlehem
a babe, he grew as a child, he
ripened into manhood, and lived here among us, eating and drinking,
suffering and rejoicing, sleeping and laboring as men do.
He died in very
deed and of a truth, and was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea.
That death was the grand fact which is set forth by the words "the
blood of the Lamb."
We are to view Jesus as the Lamb of God's
passover: not merely separated from others, dedicated to be
Israel
's memorial, and consecrated to
divine service, but as the Lamb slain.
Remember, that Christ viewed as living, and not as having
died, is not a saving Christ. He himself saith, "I am he that liveth and
was dead."
The moderns cry, "Why not preach more about his
life, and less about his death?" I reply, Preach his life as much as
you will, but never apart from his death; for it is by his blood that we are
redeemed.
"We preach Christ." Complete the sentence. "We
preach Christ crucified,"
says the apostle. Ah, yes! there is the point. It is the death of the Son of
God which is the conquering weapon.
Had he not poured forth his soul unto
death, even to the death of the cross-had he not been numbered with the
transgressors, and put to a death of shame-we should have had no weapon with
which to overcome the dragon prince. By "the blood of the Lamb"
we understand the death of the Son of God.
Hear it, O men! Because you have
sinned, Jesus dies that you may be cleared from your sin. "He his own
self bare our sins in his own body on the tree," and died that he might
redeem us from all unrighteousness.
The point is his death, and
paradoxically, this death is the vital point of the gospel. The death of
Christ is the death of sin and the defeat of Satan, and hence it is the life
of our hope, and the assurance of his victory.
Because he poured out his
soul unto the death, he divides the spoil with the strong.
~Charles Spurgeon~
WHEN we turn away from the world, and leave it, we ourselves are not left to desolation and orphan-hood.
When we “come out from among them” the Lord receives us!
He is waiting for us. The new companionship is ours the moment the old companionship is ended. “I will not leave you comfortless.”
What we have lost is compensated by infinite and eternal gain.
We have lost “the whole world” and gained “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
And therefore separation is exaltation.
We leave the muddy pleasures of Sodom and we “drink of the river of His pleasures.”
We leave “the garish day,” and all the feverish life of Vanity Fair, and He maketh us “to lie down in green pastures,” “He leadeth us beside the still waters.”
We leave a transient sensation, we receive the bread of eternity. We forfeit fireworks, we gain the stars!
What fools we are, and blind! We prefer the scorched desert of Sodom to the garden of Eden.
We prefer a loud reputation to noble character. We prefer delirium to joy.
We prefer human applause to the praise of God. We prefer a fading garland to the crown of life.
Lord, that we may receive our sight!
~John Henry Jowett~
.jpg)
