Am I bowed down? Then let me urge this word of
grace before the LORD.
It is His way, His custom, His promise, His
delight, to raise up them that are bowed down.
Is it a sense of sin and a
consequent depression of spirit which distresses me?
Then the work of
Jesus is, in this case, made and provided to raise me up into rest. O
LORD, raise me, for Thy mercy's sake!
Is it a sad bereavement or a great fall in circumstances? Here again
the Comforter has undertaken to console.
What a mercy for us that one
Person of the sacred Trinity should become the Comforter! This work will
be well done since such a glorious One has made it His peculiar care.
Some are so bowed down that only Jesus can loose them from their
infirmity, but He can, and He will, do it.
He can raise us up to health,
to hope, to happiness.
He has often done so under former trials, and He
is the same Savior and will repeat His deeds of lovingkindness.
We who
are today bowed down and sorrowful shalt yet be set on high, and those
who now mock at us shall be greatly ashamed.
What an honor to be raised
up by the LORD!
It is worthwhile to be bowed down that we may experience
His upraising power.
~Charles Spurgeon~
Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." 2 Timothy 2:3
We
often get into states and frames of mind, where we need something else
besides consolation.
A child would not grow, if it were always fed upon
sweetmeats.
It must have exercise, and be exposed to the weather, and
have the cold winds blow upon its face, and be hardened, so as to enable
it to bear the chill winter and the nipping frosts.
So the child of God
is not always petted, and fed upon love-tokens.
He is not always
carried in the warm bosom, or sucking the breasts of consolation, but he
has to learn lessons to fit him to be a soldier.
The soldier, we know,
has to endure hardships. He has to lie all night upon the wet grass; to
be pinched with hunger, parched with thirst, and nipped with cold; to
make harassing marches; to hear the roar of the cannon and the whistling
of the bullets, "the thunder of the captains and the shouting;" to see
the flash of the sabre uplifted to cut him down, and the glitter of the
bayonet at his breast, aye, and to feel painful and dangerous wounds.
So
with the spiritual soldier in God's camp.
He has to hunger and thirst,
to suffer cold, nakedness, and hard privations, to be shot at by the
arrows of calumny and the fiery darts of Satan, to make harassing
marches through an enemy's country, to suffer painful wounds, and by
these very exercises learn to be a soldier.
Only so far as he is thus
exercised spiritually can he learn the art of war, can he know how to
fight and make effectual battle under the banners of the Lord against
the enemies of his salvation.
~J. C. Philpot~
Psa 119:42 So shall I have wherewith to answer him that reproacheth me: for I trust in thy word.
The strength of our faith is in direct proportion to our level of belief that God will do exactly what He has promised.
Faith has nothing to do with feelings, impressions, outward appearances, nor the probability or improbability of an event.
If we try to couple these things with faith, we are no longer resting on the Word of God, because faith is not dependent on them.
Faith rests on the pure Word of God alone. And when we take Him at His Word, our hearts are at peace.
God delights in causing us to exercise our faith. He does so to bless us individually, to bless the church at large, and as a witness to unbelievers.
Yet we tend to retreat from the exercising of our faith instead of welcoming it.
When trials come, our response should be,“My heavenly Father has placed this cup of trials into my hands so I may later have something pleasant.”
Trials are the food of faith. Oh, may we leave ourselves in the hands of our heavenly Father!
It is the joy of His heart to do good to all His children.Yet trials and difficulties are not the only way faith is exercised and thereby increased.
Reading the Scriptures also acquaints us with God as He has revealed Himself in them.
Are you able to genuinely say, from your knowledge of God and your relationship with Him, that He is indeed a beautiful Being?
If not, let me graciously encourage you to ask God to take you to that point, so you will fully appreciate His gentleness and kindness, so you will be able to say just how good He is, and so you will know what a delight it is to God’s heart to do good for His children.
The closer we come to this point in our inner being,the more willing we are to leave ourselves in His hands and the more satisfied we are with all of His dealings with us.
Then when trials come, we will say, “I will patiently wait to see the good God will do in my life, with the calm assurance He will do it.”
In this way,we will bear a worthy testimony to the world and thereby strengthen the lives of others.
~George Mueller~
Isa 4:4 When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion,
Here is the case of foul blood, and when the blood is foul the entire body is infected with defilement.
When the stream is poisoned the deadliness touches the entire countryside.
When the postman has smallpox he leaves it at every house.
The blood is the courier of the body. It is the vital current, and if the blood is polluted every fiber of the flesh will share its corruption.
And the blood of Jerusalem was impure.
Her life was not affected by a temporary fever, or by some transient spasm of irritability or fear.
She was not troubled by a slight chill which had made her lukewarm, and which had robbed her of speed and nimbleness in the paths of obedience.
She was the victim of bad blood. She had become bad at heart.
Her soul was poisoned.There was something rotten at the very core of her being.
It was not a passing indisposition, it was a deadly possession.
How is it to be dealt with? "By the blast of burning."
The figure of speech may seem confusing, but the meaning is clear.
Defilement has to be met by fire.
Fire is the last and greatest resource in the ministry of cleansing. When water is powerless, fire is efficient.
The plague in England in 1665 was burned away by the great fire in 1666. And so it is in the ministries of God.
There are plagues and defilements in society which seem as though they can only be reached and removed by the fires of calamity and tragedy, and by the blasts of unutterable woe.
There are fields which cannot be cleansed by means of ordinary culture, by the plough, or the spade, or the hoe, but only by the ministry of fire.
And God's fire comes! The blast of burning visits cities, and countries, and races, and through much suffering they reach a cleaner, sweeter life.
The severity may appear destructive, but the destruction is the instrument of a gracious culture, as it is also the gloomy pioneer of a more bountiful life.
The frost, which kills the harvest of a year, saves the harvest of a century by destroying the weevil or the locust.
God's frosts are the ministries of coming harvests. God's fiery blasts are the fiery dawns of a better and larger day.
Jerusalem is purged by the blast of burning. Our God is a consuming fire.
~John Henry Jowett~
In
the first place, sin that is respectable has an unequaled power of
deadening the conscience.
In the mirror of the society he moves in, a
man sees nothing to alarm or terrify.
When you glance at the mirror in
the morning, and see the usual signs of health upon your face, you take
it for granted, in a general way, that you are in your customary
well-being.
And so when in the mirror of society a man detects no sign
of disapproval, he too is apt to think that all is well.
No one around
suggests that there is danger; and so the feeling of danger disappears.
Others are not shocked by what we do, and so we come not to be shocked
ourselves.
So is born that deadliest of states, in which we are
complacent and self-satisfied; no longer ill at ease with our own
selves, because others are not ill at ease with us.
Think of the
Pharisee and publican in our Lord's parable. The publican could never
forget he was despised.
He saw it in the face of every child, in the
contemptuous looks of every woman.
Wherever he went his sin was mirrored
to him in the attitude of every honourable Jew.
He tried to disguise
what he was from his own heart, but his society stripped his disguise
away.
His was a disreputable sin, but it was not the most dangerous of
sins.
There was a warning in every man he met, in every child who drew
away from him.
Until at last, utterly sick at heart, and with a
conscience stabbed into activity, he flung himself upon the Temple
floor, crying, "God be merciful to me a sinner.''
Now compare with that,
the Pharisee. He had no mirror to show him to himself.
There was
nothing in the society he moved in to warn him of what he was in God's
sight.
He read himself in the respect of others; came quietly to accept
the general estimate, until his heart was hard, his conscience deadened,
and himself on the verge of being damned.
Had his sin cast him out of
human fellowship, he never would have been tempted so.
Had honourable
doors been barred on him he would have soon lost his self-complacency.
And so you see his peril lay in this--not in the bare fact that he was
sinful; but in the deadening of conscience that had come, because his
sin was perfectly respectable.
~George H. Morrison~
Isa 50:10 Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God.
What shall
the believer do in times of darkness--the darkness of perplexity and
confusion, not of heart but of mind?
Times of darkness come to the
faithful and believing disciple who is walking obediently in the will of
God; seasons when he does not know what to do, nor which way to turn.
The sky is overcast with clouds. The clear light of Heaven does not
shine upon his pathway. One feels as if he were groping his way in
darkness.
Beloved, is this you?
What shall the
believer do in times of darkness?
Listen! "Let him trust in the name of
the Lord, and rely upon his God."
The first thing to
do is do nothing.
This is hard for poor human nature to do. In the West
there is a saying that runs thus, "When you're rattled, don't rush"; in
other words, "When you don't know what to do, don't do it."
When
you run into a spiritual fog bank, don't tear ahead; slow down the
machinery of your life.
If necessary, anchor your bark or let it swing
at its moorings.
We are to simply trust God. While we trust, God can
work.
Worry prevents Him from doing anything for us.
If our minds are
distracted and our hearts distressed; if the darkness that overshadows
us strikes terror to us; if we run hither and yon in a vain effort to
find some way of escape out of a dark place of trial, where Divine
providence has put us, the Lord can do nothing for us.
The
peace of God must quiet our minds and rest our hearts.
We must put our
hand in the hand of God like a little child, and let Him lead us out
into the bright sunshine of His love.
He knows the way out of
the woods. Let us climb up into His arms, and trust Him to take us out
by the shortest and surest road.
~Dr. Pardington~
Remember we are never without a pilot when we know not how to steer.
Hold on, my heart, in thy believing--The steadfast only wins the crown;
He who, when stormy winds are heaving, Parts with its anchor, shall go down;
But he who Jesus holds through all, Shall stand, though Heaven and earth should fall.
Hold out! There comes an end to sorrow; Hope from the dust shall conquering rise;
The storm foretells a summer's morrow; The Cross points on to Paradise;
The Father reigneth! cease all doubt; Hold on, my heart, hold on, hold out."
Isa 44:21 Remember these, O Jacob and Israel; for thou art my servant: I have formed thee; thou art my servant: O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me.
Our Jehovah cannot so forget His servants as to cease to love them.
He chose them not for a time but forever.
He knew what they would be
when He called them into the divine family.
He blots out their sins like
a cloud; and we may be sure that He will not turn them out of doors for
iniquities which He has blotted out. It would be blasphemy to imagine
such a thing.
He will not forget them so as to cease to think of
them.
One forgetful moment on the part of our God would be our ruin.
Therefore He says, "Thou shalt not be forgotten of me," Men forget us;
those whom we have benefited turn against us.
We have no abiding place
in the fickle hearts of men; but God will never forget one of His true
servants.
He binds Himself to us not by what we do for Him but by what
He has done for us.
We have been loved too long and bought at too great a
price to be now forgotten.
Jesus sees in us His soul's travail, and
that He never can forget.
The Father sees in us the spouse of His Son,
and the Spirit sees in us His own effectual work.
The LORD thinketh upon
us.
This day we shall be succored and sustained.
Oh, that the LORD may
never be forgotten of us!
~Charles Spurgeon~
2Ki
22:19 Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself
before the LORD, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and
against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation
and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have
heard thee, saith the LORD.
Many despise warning and perish. Happy is he who trembles at the Word
of God.
Josiah did so, and he was spared the sight of the evil which
the LORD determined to send upon Judah because of her great sins.
Have
you this tenderness? Do you practice this self-humiliation?
Then you
also shall be spared in the evil day.
God sets a mark upon the men that
sigh and cry because of the sin of the times.
The destroying angel is
commanded to keep his sword in its sheath till the elect of God are
sheltered: these are best known by their godly fear and their trembling
at the Word of the LORD.
Are the times threatening? Does infidelity
advance with great strides, and do you dread national chastisement upon
this polluted nation?
Well you may. Yet rest in this promise: "Thou
shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace: and thine eyes shall not see
all the evil which l will bring upon this place."
Better still, the LORD
Himself may come, and then the days of our mourning shall be ended.
~Charles Spurgeon~
Pro 3:25 Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh.
Pro 3:26 For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.
When God is abroad in judgments, He would not have His people
alarmed. He has not come forth to harm but to defend the righteous.
He would have them manifest courage. We who enjoy the presence of God
ought to display presence of mind.
Since the LORD Himself may suddenly
come, we ought not to be surprised at anything sudden.
Serenity under
the rush and roar of unexpected evils is a precious gift of divine love.
The LORD would have His chosen display discrimination so that they
may see that the desolation of the wicked is not a real calamity to the
universe.
Sin alone is evil; the punishment which follows thereupon is
as a preserving salt to keep society from putrefying.
We should be far
more shocked at the sin which deserves hell than at the hell which comes
out of sin.
So, too, should the LORD's people exhibit great quietness of spirit.
Satan and his serpent seed are full of all subtlety; but those who walk
with God shall not be taken in their deceitful snares.
Go on, believer
in Jesus, and let the LORD be thy confidence.
~Charles Spurgeon~
And what power! What power! Is darkness a power? Is it a power?
Well,
perhaps you have some experience to make it possible for you to say,
"Yes, I know".
When you've got to move into this world, where the Lord
is neither known nor recognized, nor acknowledged, apparently not
wanted, and you realize that darkness is an awful power, "darkness
covers the earth, and gross darkness the people".
They're in darkness,
and what can you do about it? You can talk, you can do all that is in
your power, but you cannot break this thing until the Spirit of Power as the Spirit of Light breaks in on that soul, on that life, in that realm. It wants the power of God.
Darkness is an awful power. And if that is true in this side of the
world where there has been so much light given and so much truth given,
and there is so much Christian tradition, you go to the other side of
the world - you go to those dark places of heathendom.
You have only got
to move in such a place, such a country as India where the gospel has
not touched, and you can feel the darkness. It is evil. It's positively evil! It's like that.
You may feel it in a traditionally Christian world or realm. I will
never forget my first visit to the city of Rome; and wanting to see
various things, I went to the Colosseum to see the place where the
Christians were flung to the lions.
And I went to this and that, and
then I went into St Peter's church. And, you know, I couldn't stay.
After a very short time, I had to go out.
I felt ill; physically ill! A sense of awful death came on me physically, and I was glad to get out of the place.
It was an atmosphere of death and darkness to the spirit. But, if that's true there, as I say, you go to other parts of the world and you can cut the darkness. It's so strong. It's a terrible thing.
When the Spirit of God as the Spirit of Light entered into this darkness
which was over the face of the earth, it met an awful power, it was
dealing with an awful power, and it called for the exercise of the
Infinite Power of God to break that reign of darkness.
It called for the
Divine Fiat: "Let there be light" - the Word of His Power.
Oh, that our
hearts cry and crave for the knowledge of that Power in His Word more.
If the smallest percentage of all our speaking had the real Power
of God in it, something would happen.
Something would happen, it would
be a fiat, an act of God to speak. That is why the Lord Jesus is called
"the Word" because where He comes as the Word, something happens,
something happens!
The devil is exposed, as when He was here and cried
out, "I know Thee Who Thou art, the Holy One of God". Hell felt the
impact of the Word.
Men, sinful men, cried out in His presence like
that. The point is, darkness is a terrible power.
The disruption in our humanity is a terribly strong thing. We are,
every day, almost every moment of our lives, up against that breakup in
the humanity which is ours, or the breakdown of it, the disorder of it,
the disintegration of it, the disruption of it.
We know that our
humanity is a broken down thing. We are all the time striving to pick it
up and build it up and hold it up. We know it's a power, a terrible
power - the disorder and chaos in ourselves.
The Spirit of God came of
His own accord, of His own accord as the Spirit of Power to deal with
what no other power in this universe could deal with; to change it.
And
that's where we are in the new creation; it's what the Spirit of God has undertaken to do with us.
And surely there are few, if any, in this place tonight who would not echo the words of the apostle, "Kept by the power of God".
You know you would not be a Christian today, you would not be going on
with the Lord, you would not be standing true, but for the keeping power
of God.
In a world like this, there is such a power against what is the
Lord’s.
Well, this is the Spirit of Grace, you see, that has come to take it over. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Grace is the custodian of the Divine Perfection.
He has taken responsibility for realizing God’s End. Oh, thank God for
that!
Knowing ourselves and the awful forces that there are in our
nature; knowing the world, or something of it, and the awful forces that
there are in this world; and knowing the devil and something of his
inimical hatred and opposition to what is of God, anything that's of
God, we say, "Well, the only possibility is if God Almighty does it,
sees to it".
And that is the Spirit of Grace that has come to take it
up, to do it - the free action of the Holy Spirit.
See, we read, you know we read John 16. We read John 16, and if I asked
you what's in John 16, you'd have the answer.
Well, you know John 16 is,
"I am going away, I am going away. You see Me now, you won't see Me
anymore.
I return unto My Father... for if I go not away, the Comforter
will not come, if I go away, I will send Him to you..." and on and on
and on, what He will do, what He will do when He is come, when He is
come; when He is come.
It's all so natural, all so effortless, it
seems; it's just going to be!
It's just in the order of things. He's
coming and He's going to do this and that; and that is all
there is to it.
It's just that He is coming, "I am going to send Him".
We read it, we know the content of the Word, but do we realize that all
this just means that the Holy Spirit is taking over all that Christ came
to initiate, to carry it right through to its End.
He's just going to
do it; it's what He's come for. He is the Spirit of Grace, and grace is
just God doing all that God can do without asking for any
merit or any payment.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of that grace as the
power of God, but that's one of the riches: the riches of His power
through grace.
We ought, you see, to get down to our Bibles and have a word study, and a
passage study here, and there, and there. Perhaps if I only just remind
you, it will start off something.
Have you not noticed that grace is
many-sided in the New Testament? And one of the sides, or aspects of
grace is that it is an energy. It's an energy, it's a power. It's a
force in our lives.
There was a messenger of Satan given me to buffet
me. And although these are not the words that the apostle used, this is
what he meant, "I cried out to the Lord: Take this away, because I
can't endure it.
I shan't be able to go on with this thing. I'll not be
able to get through; this is too much, this is too strong, this is too
great a burden.
It's going to limit me; it's going to spoil my life. And
He said unto me, 'My grace is sufficient for thee: My strength is made
perfect in weakness.'"
Grace there is introduced as over against the
conscious inability of the apostle to go on with what he had been
called for on him, what had been put on him.
His natural reaction was,
"I just cannot! If I've got to have this, I'll just not be able to. Take
it away, Lord".
He said, "I asked Him three times, take it away, Lord;
take it away, Lord; take it away! Life is impossible."
He said, "My
grace is sufficient for thee" - everything is possible to grace.
It's a
power, you see. It's a power; an energy in the life.
We do know
this in measure, not as we ought to, we have had to say many times, "But
for the grace of God I should have acted very differently from what I
did.
But for the grace of God... grace saved me. Grace kept me. Grace
held me."
It's the power of God as the Spirit of Grace. But there is where the riches begin.
~T. Austin Sparks~
Many things combine to make the present inroad of false doctrine peculiarly dangerous.
1. There is an undeniable zeal in some of the teachers of error: their “earnestness” makes many think they must be right.
2. There is a great appearance of learning and theological knowledge: many fancy that such clever and intellectual men must surely be safe guides.
3. There is a general tendency to free thought and free inquiry in these latter days: many like to prove their independence of judgment, by believing novelties.
4. There is a wide-spread desire to appear charitable and liberal-minded: many seem half ashamed of saying that anybody can be in the wrong.
5. There is a quantity of half-truth taught by the modern false teachers: they are incessantly using Scriptural terms and phrases in an unscriptural sense.
6. There is a morbid craving in the public mind for a more sensuous, ceremonial, sensational, showy worship: men are impatient of inward, invisible heart-work.
7. There is a silly readiness in every direction to believe everybody who talks cleverly, lovingly and earnestly, and a determination to forget that Satan often masquerades himself “as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).
8. There is a wide-spread “gullibility” among professing Christians:
every heretic who tells his story plausibly is sure to be believed, and
everybody who doubts him is called a persecutor and a narrow-minded
man.
All these things are peculiar symptoms of our times. I defy any
observing person to deny them.
They tend to make the assaults of false
doctrine in our day peculiarly dangerous.
They make it more than ever
needful to cry aloud, “Do not be carried away!
~ J.C. Ryle~
2Th 3:3 But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.
Men are often as devoid of reason as of faith. There are with us still
"unreasonable and wicked men."
There is no use in arguing with them or
trying to be at peace with them: they are false at heart and deceitful
in speech.
Well, what of this? Shall we worry ourselves with them? No;
let us turn to the Lord, for He is faithful.
No promise from His Word
will ever be broken.
He is neither unreasonable in His demands upon us
nor unfaithful to our claims upon Him.
We have a faithful God. Be this
our joy.
He will stablish us so that wicked men shall not cause our downfall, and
He will keep us so that none of the evils which now assail us shall
really do us damage.
What a blessing for us that we need not contend
with men but are allowed to shelter ourselves in the Lord Jesus, who is
in truest sympathy with us.
There is one true heart, one faithful mind,
one never changing love; there let us repose.
The Lord will fulfill the
purpose of His grace to us, His servants, and we need not allow a shadow
of a fear to fall upon our spirits.
Not all that men or devils can do
can hinder us of the divine protection and provision.
This day let us
pray the Lord to stablish and keep us.
~Charles Spurgeon~
Equally
notable is this, too, that Peter began to sink when he began to fear.
And the Scripture tells when he began to fear: it was when he took his
eyes off his Lord.
There is not a trace that the wind had grown more
fierce while the disciple was walking on the water. It had been just as
fierce and the waves had been just as boisterous when he had sprung from
the gunwale of the boat.
But then he had thought of nothing but the
Master, had eyes for nobody except the Master, and so long as that
continued he was safe.
Looking to Christ, he could go anywhere. The very
sea was as a pavement to him. Looking away from Christ he was as other
men, and the perils that surrounded him were terrible.
And then he
regretted the rashness of his venture and saw nothing around him but the
seething waters, and so Peter began to be afraid and beginning to be
afraid, began to sink.
That is true of every kind of life. It is true
especially of spiritual life.
In the perilous calling of the spiritual
life, to lose heart is to lose everything. And that is why the Lord is
always saying to us, "My son, give me thine heart," for only in His
keeping is it safe.
It is a simple message--looking unto Jesus, and yet
it is the message of salvation. To trust in Him and to keep the eye on
Him is the one secret of all Christian victory.
And when we have failed
to do so in the stress of life, as all of us, like Simon Peter, fail,
then there is nothing left but to cry with Peter, "Lord, save me, or I
perish."
~George H. Morrison~
Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic.
~John Henry Jowett~
Gratitude is a vaccine … by focusing on that which is praiseworthy, gratitude inoculates us against the disease of bitterness and resentment.
Gratitude is an antitoxin … by focusing on that which is praiseworthy we counteract the poisonous lie of the Evil One that says trials are proof that God has abandoned us.
Gratitude is an antiseptic … by focusing on that which is praiseworthy we sterilize our thoughts of all that would breed the germ of discontent.
Pro 17:22 A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
Php 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
~John Henry Jowett~
