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Last Updated on : Saturday, October 11, 2014

 

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Seasons of Comfort (Volume 2 )

Robert Roberts

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Sunday Number 103

Click here to bypass list Exhortation

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Contents  
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12
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Preface  
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Vol 1  
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OBSERVATIONS FOR PROBATIONS COURSE

Journey through life needs charting surroundings deceive fixed and distant objects essential past: God, life, death and resurrection of Jesus present: God and Jesus control all future: Jesus will return steer life by these.

THESE meetings are useful in more ways than one. They enable us to take observations like the ships at sea, by which to know our whereabouts. There is, in fact, a very complete analogy between the position of a ship at sea and the relation of our lives to the goal at which we are aiming. If you are on board a ship at sea, out of sight of land, you cannot tell where you are by looking over the ships side into the water, or by looking at other ships, or by looking at the shifting clouds in the sky. You have to look at fixed and distant objects, very distant. You have to take observations of the sun, and of certain stars; by working out these you can calculate to a nicety the latitude and longitude of the vessel, and ascertain how many miles you are from such a coast or such an island. If the people in the ship did not make these observations, the vessel would drift into danger, they would sail without knowing where they were going, and would soon be destroyed. This is exactly how it is with life: what is the meaning of it? Where is it situated? To what point is it tending? We cannot answer these questions by looking at what is passing immediately under the eye, nor by looking at other people, nor by watching the movements among men. All these are the mere water over the side of the ship, and passing ships and clouds. We have to fix our eyes upon distant objects.

If a ship is within sight of land, she can tell where she is, without looking at the sun and stars; at least, sometimes she can do so, if the land is recognizable; but even then she has to consider what is visible on her horizon in connection with what is in the sky so far away.

So it is with us; we look before and behind, and take our first and nearest observation from fixed objects. A short way back, we see a cradle; a short way forward, a grave. These tell us something; they tell us that the life we are now living is a fleeting thing; that it had a beginning not long ago, and it will have an end in no long time. We do not read life correctly unless we have these two things distinctly in view; but this is not enough by itself, it is a great deal so far as it goes, it is more than most people are in the habit of remembering. It helps everyone to be wise and humble, to remember that we are here but for a short time. But if we knew no more than this, we should not be sufficiently informed to be wise, we have to look further back and further forward.

Looking further back, we see, first, that there were many people alive before we were born. Of these, countless millions are of no moment to us; they lived and died, and passed away, and will never more be heard of. But this is not the case with some. As we look back, we see some very prominent names, some very tall figures, some men whose names will always be mentioned while the human race lasts. But not all of these are of importance to us; most of them are as shifting clouds. Pharaoh, for example, Nebuchadnezzar, Charlemagne, Napoleon; what are these to us but mere milestones of history? Is this the case with all the past? Is all history devoid of personal bearing? The answer naturally starts to every wise lip; there is a name above all names, a figure towering to the very heavens, who is much more than history. We not only hear of Jesus Christ in all lands and in all tongues, but the report of him differs from the report of all other men that ever appeared. The very first aspect in which he is seen by the idlest glance of the eye bespeaks a close personal significance. No one ever heard of Christ without knowing that he was crucified. The record written in the age that witnessed his crucifixion tells us also its meaning, and at once places Christ by himself amongst all historical celebrities. Although his crucifixion was a human performance so far as instrumentality was concerned, the Jews and Romans uniting to put him to death, under a common animus, yet it was a divine performance, as Peter, under the sanction of the Holy Spirit, informed the Jews afterwards. Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, he said, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. And again, The kings of the earth stood up, and their rulers were gathered together, against the Lord, and against His Christ... to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel had determined before to be done (Acts 2:23; 4:28).

But why did the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God decree such a tragic event? The information was written beforehand by the prophet: All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all... It pleased the Lord to bruise him, He hath put him to grief; he hath poured out his soul unto death, he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many (Isaiah 53:6-12). In the brief and comprehensive language of Paul, He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, the practical application of which he illustrated in the Gospel announcement, Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. Who is there among all the celebrities of history of whom such things can be said?

When we consider the meaning of these things, how great and important does Christ appear. For God is in them; God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. But why should reconciliation take this sanguinary and painful form the immolation of a harmless, righteous, benevolent man, at the hands of sinners? For the reason we discover in the instruction of the Spirit by the apostles, but a reason that touches no chord of sympathy in a merely natural man; it is a reason having to do with God, who made man and all things for Himself. God is great and holy, and will be exalted and obeyed. On the earth He has been debased and set at nought among men and He can have nothing further to do with them, except by the reversal of this position. He will only be approached by those who recognize the righteous condemnation of sin in one who shared their sin nature for the purpose, but who himself was holy, harmless and undefiled.

Looking back, therefore, at this historic figure of the crucified Jesus, we learn that our passing life has a divine relation; that man exists not for himself, but for God, who calls upon him to give unto God the glory due unto His name, and who will not tolerate the treason that withholds that glory, and bestows it upon man. He tells us that a life of indifference to Him, a life of disobedience, a life of wicked works, is a life that alienates from God, and a life darkened with a curse that no man can remove. We are thus brought to see a meaning in life undiscoverable otherwise.

The divine meaning of life is not wholly future. Now are we the sons of God, as John says, and now are we to please God by offering the sacrifice of praise to Him continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name (Heb. 13:15). It is now that we are called upon to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, being not conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:1-2).

But as we look again, we see not only a crucified Christ but a risen Christ. There was more said about the resurrection of Christ by the apostles than about the crucifixion of Christ, a peculiarity in which there is a sharp contrast between their preaching and modern preaching. There is a reason for this, which we know. The fables of heathendom have eaten out the Truth as a canker, as Paul foretold. The idea that man is an immortal, spiritual entity, surviving the dissolution of the body, takes away all necessity for and meaning from the resurrection, whereas the truth that man is but a living body whom death destroys, necessitates the resurrection, if there is to be a future life, and explains the whole transaction of divine wisdom by Christ in his crucifixion and resurrection. It was a bodily man that sinned, and a bodily man that was condemned, and it is a bodily man that dies; and, therefore, it was a bodily Christ that was crucified and a bodily Christ that rose. Without this bodily resurrection, the whole matter would have ended in emptiness in all senses, for Gods object in the matter was to provide a mediator; His greatness and holiness did not permit of His dealing with sinful man direct; His kindness can only operate conformably with His dignity, through one in whom His righteousness has been declared.

Now if Christ had not risen, there would have been no provision of such an one; there would have been no priest, no judge, no dispenser of Gods favor, no Job for the three friends. As Paul says, If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain. So here is another great aspect of this great name which serves as a guide to the meaning of the life we are now living. Christ died, but Christ rose; herein he differs from all other names of history. Why has no tradition of resurrection arisen in connection with any other man? There was no absence of motive. Of many of the great men of history we read that they were so important to the situation of the moment that when they died their attendants were afraid to make their death known, and if they could by any possibility have successfully invented the idea of their resurrection, the invention would have stalked forth in all pomp and parade. But no, it is not easy to invent a faith of this kind as unbelievers suggest; in fact, it is impossible; there is no other case but the case of Christ in which such a faith has been established, for the simple reason that there is no other case in which resurrection took place. The fact of his resurrection rested not upon opinion, nor desirability, nor predisposition, but went against all these; for the apostles, who were witnesses of his resurrection, had their opinions and predispositions in the contrary form. They knew not the Scripture that he should rise from the dead, and they would not believe it in the first instance. Only the evidence of their senses repeated many times drove all unbelief away.

Now, if Christ rose from the dead, he lives at the present hour, and his existence has a personal meaning to every life that opens to the faith of him. With this relationship, the life we are now living acquires a meaning and an interest which it cannot possess in any other line of things. Disconnected from this, we know not what we should do, or why we are here, or where we are going; we are in an aimless drift across lifes solemn main. But not so with Christ in view. We have a rule of action and a prospect ahead that gives light where all was darkness, and hope, where all becomes ultimately despair. And so we naturally withdraw our eyes from the past and look ahead; and, looking forward, we get the divine meaning of life confirmed more and more. But how can we look ahead? No man knows the future; true, but God knows, and He has spoken. The Word of prophecy came not of private impulse, as Peter informs us, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Spirit. There is a God in heaven, as Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar, that revealeth secrets, and He hath made known what shall come to pass in the latter days. By means of this light in a dark place, we are able to look forward, and to see; and what is it we see? That this crucified and risen Christ is coming again. This is the one only great and glorious event associated with the future in Scripture revelation. Unenlightened people may weary of hearing of it, but it nonetheless remains as ineradicable an element of the divine programme as any item of a purposed royal progress, or private individual procedure for the matter of that; for a man in business may send an agent to Australia, with a very important commission upon which perhaps his whole fortune depends. He has arranged for that agent to return by a certain date, and until that date arrives, which perhaps may be a distant one, the return of the agent is a matter of purpose and prospect and faith. To the business man who is waiting his return, it is a very real matter of calculation, but to importunate creditors who may perhaps know nothing of the solid basis of the thing, it may seem a tiresome myth.

Men may say concerning Christ, Where is the promise of his coming? in the sense of doubting if it ever will come off. If they are earnest men, they can get their answer; if they are scornful men, no answer can meet their mood. The answer is that God hath appointed a day in which He will send Jesus Christ at the time and for the work arranged. He has given infallible proofs of this in all that has happened in the past, and if men are reasonable and attentive, they can discern the proofs. If they are frivolous and negligent, they are not worthy of the proofs. The proofs not only consist of the signs and wonders which God did by the hands of Christ and his apostles, but of the fulfilment since then of matters long foretold, and which present themselves in a very visible form in our own age.

It was foretold that in Christs absence, history would chiefly be concerned with the figure and career of a false Christ, who would be a persecutor and destroyer of Gods people, instead of their shepherd. Accordingly, the history of Europe has been the history of a religious government headed up in a man claiming to be the vicar of Christ, who has used fire and sword to coerce all the world to his claims. The only class that has disputed those claims is the one that has aimed to be in submission to Christs own commandments, and these have been slaughtered by thousands, while the others have saved themselves by worshipping the beast and his image. We see that the same sure Word of prophecy that foretold this monstrosity also revealed the time during which it would possess this terrible power. This time, as we look back, we have seen come and go. Exactly 1,260 years from its bestowal, the power has departed, within our own generation; and we live in the presence of many other multiplying and active signs of the coming of him who shall feed his flock like a shepherd, and gather them with his arm, and carry them in his bosom.

Thus taking our observations from the Sun as he rose in the east, and climbed to the meridian over our heads, we note our position on the sea of life; we know how to steer; we are not on the drift; we are nearing the shores of a happy country. We do not expect to land there without storm at the finish of the voyage, for we are informed by the chart that there is a time of trouble such as the world has never seen, waiting before it hushes into the peace of Messiahs glorious day. There is a billowy bay in front of the harbor, and a rough bar between the piers, and contrary winds chopping and changing, and lashing the waves into fury; but, taking our observations correctly, we know exactly how to handle the helm. We have a stout ship; we are under royal commission; there will be pilots out in plenty to meet us before we land; and if our papers are all in order, and we can show good result for the voyage, we shall make a triumphal entry into harbor, and be received with flying flags and musical honors.

For the time being, out of sight of land, we may be liable to languish, especially with occasional spells of calm, when there is next to no apparent motion of the vessel, and the sails flap idly against the mast; but intelligence in full view of the actual facts of the situation, is proof against the dispiritments of the passing hour. Weariness belongs to weakness, and does not alter truth. Therefore, brethren and sisters, hold fast the beginning of your confidence and rejoicing in the hope steadfast to the end. The vision has been written plain upon tables; it is for an appointed time; at the end it shall speak, and not lie; though it tarry for a time, wait for it; it will not always tarry. This is the Lords own declaration by Habakkuk, with whom we pray, . Lord, I have heard Thy speech, and was afraid; . Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years; in the midst of the years make known, in wrath remember mercy... When I heard, my belly trembled, my lips quivered at the voice, rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. He will make my feet swift; He will make me to walk upon high places. He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so; come, Lord Jesus.

 


 
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