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THE WAY OF BLESSING AND THE WAY OF RUIN

You will notice, dear friends, that we have read of three pairs of brothers—Cain and Abel—Ishmael and Isaac—Esau and Jacob. Each of these pairs of brothers had parents that had light from God. Therefore their history becomes of great importance to most, if not all, of those present here, because at any rate most of us have had a similar advantage. We have been brought up in surroundings where the light of God is known; but in each case the two brothers stand in contrast, one taking one way, and the other another. Therefore their history is of solemn importance to everyone here, as to whether each one here is going to receive the light which God is giving, and commit himself to it, and embrace it fully; or whether any are going to turn away from it, or substitute something else for it, or despise it.

All these incidents actually happened hundreds of years ago. In themselves you might say that the incidents do not appear to have been of great importance, but they were divinely ordered to set out certain important principles of truth, and they are ordered and placed on record that they might have a voice to you and me. Indeed in the 11th chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, written many centuries after this first incident took place, we read of Abel that, “he being dead yet speaketh”, as though God would say that Abel has a voice to you. Also in the epistle of Jude, written a great many years after the incidents, we read of “the way of Cain”, and of some who go in it, and as to them the scripture says, “Woe unto them”. Hence obviously the history of Cain and Abel is one of great importance to us all, because if we embark on the way that Cain inaugurated, we are heading for eternal woe. On the other hand, if we would only pay attention to Abel, “he being dead yet speaketh”, then we will come into the same blessing which Abel came into. Indeed I may say that we shall come into far greater blessing, as a matter of fact, because God in His sovereign wisdom has been pleased to institute different dispensations and a different character of blessing attaching to each, and we live in the day when the greatest conceivable blessing awaits those who turn to Christ.

Well now, before we can understand rightly the history of Cain and Abel we need to cast our minds back to the previous chapter, well known I do not doubt to all those that are at all familiar with their Bibles. And I might say, dear friends, that God expects that we should familiarise ourselves with our Bibles. The Bible is a most important book, divinely inspired from cover to cover and containing the mind of God, His testimony concerning Christ, His word to our consciences, and His appeal to our hearts. It is a book that must not be neglected. Indeed no one can understand the 11th chapter of Hebrews, to which I have already alluded, unless he is in fact familiar with the history of Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and Rahab. No one who has not read his Bible and become familiar with those histories can understand that important chapter of the scriptures. God anticipates that having been given His word we will at least familiarise ourselves with it. Therefore I would urge on all here, and especially the young ones, that you make up your mind to make yourself familiar with the scripture, with the letter of it even. Acquaint yourself with all that there is in the Bible, every book of it, and read it over and over again, because there is a wealth of material there, that in due time the Holy Spirit can take up and open up to you, using it to communicate the mind of God to you.

Now, as I have said, we need for a moment to look back on the third chapter of Genesis, where we have the divinely given account of the entrance of sin into the world. As we well know, God had placed Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, in a garden surrounded by conditions that were in every way congenial. He had given them the utmost liberty, of all the trees of the garden they might freely eat. There was but one tree which He reserved, saying that they were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now I know that the incident in the third of Genesis is often ridiculed among men and they speak cynically and sarcastically of it. They speak of man as having taken an apple, and the absurdity of the serious consequences resulting from such a simple act, and all that kind of thing, but it will not do, dear friends, to treat the things of God like that! In God requiring that man should abstain from eating of one tree, He was just laying down a most essential principle that should govern the creature in relation to his Creator, and that is obedience. He was laying that down as an essential element that must govern the relations of the creature with his Creator, and in laying it down He did not make it difficult, He made it as easy and as simple as possible. He surrounded man with everything that was calculated to minister to his comfort and afford him satisfaction, and He said that there was only one thing that he must abstain from, and that was just one particular tree. You might say, Why was that necessary? I would say it was necessary for this reason, that it was morally right that the condition of obedience should be laid down as the basis of the creature’s relations with God. And you know what sin is; sin is simply the rising up of the will of the creature against the will of the Creator, and that is what makes sin so serious.

It is morally heinous, it is morally treason, for the creature’s will to assert itself in opposition to the will of the Creator. It is important to look at things like that, I am not being extreme. I am simply stating things as they are; everybody knows that in an ordinary, well-ordered, civilised State, treason is the worst crime that can be committed, because if it is allowed to pass with impunity it imperils the whole situation. There is an end to all order, there is an end to all peace, and there is an end to everything that men value, if treason is allowed to pass lightly. Sin is lawlessness, it is the rising up of the will of the creature against the will of the Creator and that is what makes it so serious.

Well now, the commandment of God was disobeyed and it says, “the eyes of them both”, that is the man and the woman, “were opened, and they knew that they were naked”. They became aware for the first time of what we speak of as conscience. They knew that they were naked, they knew that they had disobeyed, but what was more than that, they knew that their condition, as guilty in the sight of God, was all open and apparent to the eyes of Him with whom they had to do. Now what do they do? I am going over all these details because they are important as leading up to the incident of Cain and Abel. What did they do? They made themselves aprons of fig-leaves. They did their very best to meet the situation that had arisen through their own disobedience. People often say in these days that if you do your best and are perfectly sincere, God cannot expect or require more than that. But let us examine it and see if it is so. The third chapter of Genesis will show whether it is so or not. I think there could be no question about it, that Adam and Eve did their best when they made themselves aprons of fig-leaves, and that they were perfectly sincere in their desire to cover their nakedness of which they were conscious, and to make themselves acceptable in the sight of the God with whom they had to do. But what then? It says, “they heard the voice of Jehovah Elohim, walking in the garden in the cool of the day”. And what did they do? Did they come into the open and say, ‘Here we are, we have done our best, we are perfectly sincere’? Did they say that? They did not; they went and hid themselves behind the trees of the garden. So much for our best, dear friends, so much for our sincerity; it will not stand the test of the light of God. The moment they were conscious that God was drawing near they showed that they had no confidence in their best or in their sincerity; they went and hid themselves behind the trees of the garden. Now how are they to be saved? Thank God that the truth is still this, that “our Saviour God ... desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”, 1 Tim 2: 4. He has no pleasure in the loss of any. It gives Him no pleasure to judge the wicked, although the wicked must be judged. But what did God do? He came out consistently with what He has since proved Himself to be—a Saviour God! It says, “And Jehovah Elohim made Adam and his wife coats of skin, and clothed them”. Now what a difference, fig leaves had not required death to produce them, aprons of fig leaves could be produced apart from death; but when Jehovah Elohim made coats of skin, that meant that some animal had had to be slain, that death had to come in, that the righteousness which the covering speaks of with which God covered their need, was a righteousness that was procured on the ground of the death of a substitute. And therein lies the very basis of the gospel, that from that very moment God was looking forward to Christ. It says, “Faithful is the word, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”, 1 Tim 1: 15. As though to say everybody here in Buckie should pay attention to that. It is worthy of your acceptation. Another scripture says, “For God is one, and the mediator of God and men one, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all”, 1 Tim 2: 5, 6. There can be no salvation apart from the death of a substitute, no salvation at all, and God indicated that that was the way of salvation by providing Adam and Eve with coats of skin and clothing them. And notice that the scripture says definitely that “Jehovah Elohim made Adam and his wife coats of skin, and clothed them”. That is, when God comes out from His side it is a question of both of them being clothed. God makes no difference, He is the Saviour of all men. That is His attitude, desiring that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. If some are not saved, it is not that there is any lack in God’s provision, the lack is in that someone has not availed himself, in obedience of faith, of the provision that God has made. But so far as God’s attitude to them was concerned, there was the whole race at that moment, in those two, in the man and his wife, all guilty before God, and all covered by the grace of God with coats of skin.

Now, just let us take it a stage further. I think I can imagine now, Adam and Eve coming out into the open and saying they are not now ashamed to come into the presence of God because they are clothed with that which He Himself has provided. And He will never find fault with that which He has provided; they had nothing to do with it. “Not of works”, the scripture says, “lest any man should boast”. Works are excluded, man’s boasting is excluded. But what we can boast in, is the blessed God who has come out as a Saviour God through Jesus Christ our Lord, on the basis of the blood of Christ, as it says, “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”, 1 John 1: 7. That is the abiding value, in the sight of God, of the death of His beloved Son, and on the ground of that precious death God could provide a righteous covering for those guilty sinners and show that His mind toward the whole race was that of a Saviour God. That was the light for the moment. There is not a shadow of doubt that Adam and Eve would have passed on their history to Cain and Abel. It is inconceivable that parents, who have had to do with God in grace, and have had their sins forgiven, and are made conscious that they have peace toward God through our Lord Jesus Christ, should let their children grow up and not tell them something about it. Any parents, who desire the good of their children, would be sure to tell them of the Saviour they found in Jesus and of the God that does not desire that any should perish, but all should come to repentance.

Well now, Cain and Abel, what are they going to do? This is a word to the young people here who have not yet turned to the Lord. You know the truth in terms, you move among the people of God who know it, your parents, it may be, have told you about it. How have you responded? Cain was the elder son and it is a serious thing if the eldest of a family goes wrong. The eldest of a family should bear in mind that he or she has a certain responsibility, because the tendency will be for the younger ones to follow what the older one does. If the older one sets a good example, well and good, but if the older one sets a wrong example, he may influence for harm those who are younger. Thank God in this case the younger brother was not influenced wrongly, but that was because he overcame. Cain moves first, and he approaches God, and he approaches God with an offering which had no reference whatever to the death of a victim, no reference to the death of a substitute. There was no recognition in Cain’s offering that he was a sinner deserving of death and judgment, and that he could only be saved through the death of One equal to bearing the penalty of death. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord. The ground was cursed and yet he dared to bring to God that which spoke of what had been cursed.

Now what is Abel going to do? This is a word for the younger ones in a family; if the eldest brother or sister goes wrong, and disregards the teaching of his parents and the truth of God, let not the younger do the same on any account. Abel knew the truth, as Cain knew the truth, and now Cain had moved and the question arises for Abel, am I going to do what my brother has done, or am I going to be regulated by the truth of God and adhere to the truth that I have learned from my parents? Abel, thank God, made up his mind that he would govern himself by the truth. He would go against Cain his brother, even although his action exposed his brother. He had no pleasure in exposing, but his action as governed by the truth necessarily exposed his brother. He was the first overcomer in Scripture. At the end of the book of Revelation it gives us a description of the day of eternity and the blessing of it and then it says, “He that overcomes shall inherit these things”. That is to say, you have to go against the stream; and Cain set a stream in motion that is called “the way of Cain”, and as to those who are in it, the scripture says, “Woe unto them”. Now Abel says, I must go against the stream, I cannot afford to be carried away in a stream that is going to lead me away from God and to judgment, I must go against the stream. Abel was the first overcomer, and it says, “he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of their fat”. The firstlings of his flock! He brought that which had to be sacrificed, death had to come in, and the firstlings of his flock showed that he was considering for God first, and that is an important principle. He brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat, that is to say, he would present something to God that was excellent, something which as offered would rise up as a sweet savour to God.

I can tell you, dear friends, that if you mention the name of Jesus to God and mention the precious blood of Christ to God, you will speak to Him of something that is of great excellence in His sight. The excellence attaching to Christ and His sacrifice is not to be measured by your, or my, meagre understanding of it. It is to be measured by the value which God Himself places upon it, and that is seen in that He has raised Him from the dead and highly exalted Him to His own right hand. Now Abel drew near to God with that, the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof, and it says, “Jehovah looked upon Abel, and on his offering”. That is a good thing to understand. If you draw near to God, confessing the name of the Lord Jesus, and placing your confidence in His blood, then I can say God will look upon you with favour, as well as upon your offering. “Jehovah looked upon Abel, and on his offering; and upon Cain, and on his offering, he did not look”. He simply disregarded it. It is a solemn thing to be disregarded by God. Every one of us must have to do with God, sooner or later we must give an account of ourselves to God. Think of a human soul appearing before God, and God having to say to such an one ‘I provided Christ my only begotten Son, I gave Him up for you, He has borne the judgment of sin, He has borne the penalty of death, it was all available to you, I sent down the Holy Spirit from heaven that testimony might be rendered to these things and you have heard it in the preaching and you have disregarded it’. Think of the condition of a soul to whom God has thus to speak! Sooner or later it will come to that, unless you embrace the glad tidings now. This is the acceptable time, the day of salvation. It is a day when grace is presented freely, and the fulness of the blessing too, for the obedience of faith.

I do not know that I need say more than that. Cain was exposed by Abel’s action, Abel was accepted with God and as it says, “he being dead yet speaketh”, whereas Cain murdered his brother. The spirit of murder is still abroad in the world, you have only to speak of Christ in public to find that out. I do not mean necessarily in the street preaching, because sometimes people will listen to a street preaching, but if you speak of Christ in a railway carriage or somewhere else, and you may find a believer in Jesus who is glad to respond, but you will find some who will not appreciate it at all, who do not want to hear about Christ. Of course, the law of the land will preserve them from going to extremity and violence it may be, but the spirit of murder is there. It started with Cain and it is still in the world. It showed itself when they cast out the Son of God, they crucified the Son of God, but I need not enlarge on that.

Now, in the next passage we have Ishmael and Isaac. Isaac represents a further feature of blessing for men which is announced in the gospel. Abel teaches us the ground of acceptance with God. The attitude of God towards men is one of grace, forgiveness, justification, based on the precious death of Christ and anyone who comes to God through Him receives acceptance in a most absolute way. God has Himself delivered up Jesus for our offences, and He has raised Him again for our justification. We see that God has done everything for us in Christ, and in the acceptance of that, we have peace towards God. But now there is another thing. The death of Christ is the ground on which God can righteously come out to us in blessing; but the Person of Christ, where He is as Man in the glory of God, is the expression of the measure of blessing, which God has in His heart for those who believe on Him. And what is that measure of blessing? No less than the joy and relationship of son, a son of God!

Have you ever thought that God wants you before Him as a son? You could not possibly attain to it. You could not possibly merit it by works of your own, but God has been pleased sovereignly to come out to men with this great thought that He has had in His heart from before the foundation of the world, that He wants men before Him in sonship. Now Isaac sets that forth, and he sets it forth for this reason that not only was he the beloved son of his father Abraham, but he was born outside the course of nature. Abraham was old and Sarah was old and they could not possibly bring forth a son by anything that was natural, or by their own efforts, and then God gave them a son. That is to say, He brought this in as expressing a character of blessing, which He has in mind for men, that you cannot possibly merit or do anything to attain to. It is simply the gift of God. When you believe in Christ whom God has not only raised from the dead for your justification, but glorified in His presence, God will seal your faith with the gift of the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit will teach you to say, “Abba, Father”. The Holy Spirit will teach you that God is your Father, and that you are to stand before Him in the relationship of a son, and that is a wonderful thing.

We read in Luke 15 of a son who left his substance with riotous living, and then there came a point when he said, “I will rise up and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee; I am no longer worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants”. That is what he proposed to say, and we read, “And he rose up and went to his own father. But while he was yet a long way off”—I believe the force of that is, that while he was yet in the far country, while he was yet at the point where he came to himself and arose saying I will arise and go to my father, “his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell upon his neck, and covered him with kisses”. That is how God receives and welcomes a repenting sinner! A sinner who says, “I will rise up and go to my father, and I will say to him, I have sinned against heaven and before thee”. That is what I was saying earlier, “I have sinned against heaven”, heaven is God’s throne, the young man was coming to a sense of the heinousness of sin. He had sinned against the throne of God, and he was morally a traitor, morally guilty of treason. He had sinned against the throne, and not only so but he says, “I have sinned against heaven and before thee”. Think of sinning against a God such as God is! The God who sends the rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness. The God who gives all things richly to enjoy, and we sin against a God like that! The God who has given His only begotten Son that we might live through Him! The God who sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins; think of sinning against a God like that! And now when He sees the least movement of repentance, and He sees him afar off, which means that He was on the look-out—how He would love to see it—He moves towards him in compassion.

There might be one soul here in this company that has not yet turned to Christ, and even if now there is a movement of heart in response to the preaching, a movement of heart towards Christ, God would see it with delight. He saw it and “was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell upon his neck, and covered him with kisses”. And now the son says, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee: I am no longer worthy to be called thy son”. And there he stops! Not a word about being a hired servant, no, and I will tell you why, because in the presence of God you will understand that you are not worthy to be even a hired servant! All that you deserve is hell fire. It is not a question of being a hired servant, you are not worthy of it! But there is another thing you will also discover in the presence of God, and that is He does not want hired servants, He wants sons. So the young man does not say a word about “make me as one of thy hired servants”, he stops short at “I am no longer worthy to be called thy son”. And what does the father say? Does he say ‘Well, we will wipe out all the past, we will say nothing about it’? It is perfectly true he had done that, and God does it too. For the believer in Jesus the position is that as far as the East is from the West so far has He put our transgressions from us; for the believer in Jesus the position is “their sins and iniquities will I remember no more”, God says. But no, there was not a word here about the sins; the father says, “Bring out the best robe and clothe him in it, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it”, that is to say, God has the very best that love can devise. He has the very best for everyone that turns to Him through Christ.

You cannot have anything better than God’s best, I assure you as to that. You might have a million pounds, you might have an important position in the world, you might have anything that the world thinks of value, and it is nothing to be compared with God’s best. “Bring out the best robe and clothe him in it”, and the best robe is nothing less than being found before God in Christ. The believer in Jesus is already taken into favour in the Beloved, he has the Spirit of God’s Son in his heart, making him feel perfectly at home with God and soon he will be conformed to the image of Christ, so as to be actually before God in every way, like Christ His Beloved Son; and in the happiness and the joy that he himself is suited to the presence of God, and that he himself is giving joy to the heart of God.

Well now, Ishmael mocked at all this. Isaac is the beloved son, and he sets forth that God has His best for men; something that you could not possibly attain to or merit, but God has given it sovereignly. Now Ishmael is just the son of a maidservant; that is to say he represented the hired servant idea, and Ishmael mocked. As though to say, ‘Oh, but you must allow that we should do something”. No, it will not do, dear friends, glory all belongs to God. You are never at home with God unless you are with Him on His own terms; if you try to merit something yourself by your own acts, or something of that sort, you spoil the whole position. And Ishmael mocked, but Sarah said, “Cast out this handmaid and her son; for the son of this handmaid shall not inherit with my son”. Although Abraham was not up to it for the moment he obeys the word of God, and he casts out the maidservant and her son, so that Isaac should stand out unchallenged and unrivalled as the expression typically of what God’s thought is for men; and that is that they should come into the same favour and the same glory before Him in which His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is.

Just a word in closing on Esau and Jacob: and this is a word of special importance to the younger ones present in this company. You will notice that where we started reading, it says “the boys grew”; the same thing applies, of course, in principle to girls too. God takes account of boys and girls and He watches their growth. Parents watch the growth of their children, not simply in feet and inches, but their growth as to how they are developing, as regards their outlook, their tastes and the direction which they are taking, and so on. Parents watch that, and God watches too—“the boys grew”. I would ask any boys and girls who have not yet arrived at manhood and womanhood to remember this that God is watching you as you are growing. He is watching to see how you are going to respond to the teaching you have had from your parents and your grandparents it may be. Esau and Jacob had a godly father and mother, and a godly grandfather and grandmother, for Abraham had had a right influence over Jacob at least. It says in Hebrews that “Abraham dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise”.

Now these boys grew, and the question arises, What are they going to be? It says, “Esau became a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field”, fond of sport, liking to get a name in sport. It might not be hunting nowadays, that is only for the rich, but, to apply it to-day, it might be cricket or football, or whatever it might be, you would like to make a name, and to excel in it. You would like to become known in it, and that is what Esau was, he became a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field. The field in Scripture often speaks of the world. One of the parables of the Lord says, “the field is the world”. Are you going to be in the world? The world has cast out Christ the Son of God. The world is about to be judged. Scripture speaks of the day, “at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven, with the angels of his power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who know not God, and those who do not obey the glad tidings of our Lord Jesus Christ”, 2 Thess 1: 7, 8. Are you going to be carried away in the current of a world that is going to end like that? You will be, if you are not careful! If that is your outlook and that is the way you intend to go, you are in danger of being carried into the current of a world that is going to end like that! Esau, it says, “became a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field”.

Now, was Jacob going to follow his brother’s example? No, thank God for that! There was a good deal about Jacob, in this part of his life, that was not commendable, but God takes account of the general direction, the general outlook, the general desire. There may be a good deal about your conduct that is not quite all that it should be, and I am not saying anything about that, God will see to that in due time, but the great thing is, What is your outlook? Are you going in for the things of God? Are you going in for the things that your father and mother, and your grandfather and grandmother perhaps, have gone in for, or are you going to strike out on a course of your own and go in for the world? Now Jacob says I am not going to be like Esau. Jacob was a homely man dwelling in tents, his father and mother dwelt in tents, they were pilgrims because God had called them by the gospel to find their portion in another world. And that is where we are, we are pilgrims in this world. We have the light of Christ in glory; “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus” (1 Pet 5: 10), and for that reason we are not of the world and do not wish to be. And Jacob was content to be in the same position, he was a homely man dwelling in tents. Well now, there came a test; God saw that Esau had his mind in a certain direction, and He said, I will give you an opportunity. If you embrace it all well and good, If you do not embrace it, it will but confirm that you are in the wrong direction. And so it says that Esau came from the field and was faint, and Jacob had cooked a dish. Esau said, “Feed me, I pray thee, with the red—the red thing there, for I am faint”. And Jacob says, “Sell me now thy birthright”. You may say, That was not a very brotherly thing to do! I daresay it was not, I am not commending it at all. But God had just allowed it in order that it should be a test to Esau. He said, “Sell me now thy birthright”.

What was Esau’s birthright? He was the eldest son, he was the direct heir of all the promises that God had given to Abraham and Isaac. It would have been a good birthright after all. If you are the elder son of a millionaire you expect to come into a pretty good inheritance, and Esau was in the direct line, as the eldest son, of all the promises that God had given to Abraham and Isaac. And now his brother says, “Sell me now thy birthright”. If he had appreciated the light that Abraham and Isaac had had, he would have said, ‘No, under no circumstances—I would rather die than surrender my birthright!’ But he did not, he said, “I am going to die”; as much as to say, There is nothing beyond death. That was really Esau’s outlook, there is nothing beyond death and I may as well enjoy myself while I am alive. But that is not the truth, there is something beyond death, and the Lord Jesus Christ raised from among the dead is the witness to it. God has begun to operate in resurrection in Christ, and the gospel is preached in order that you, through faith in Christ, might have part in the world that lies beyond death.

Esau despised his birthright, just for a mess of pottage. That is how it is described in the New Testament—“who for one meal sold his birthright”. Think of that! Think of a young man or young woman saying, Well, I am not going to embrace the gospel yet, I am going to have my fling, but it is just a mess of pottage! And God called Esau who did that a fornicator or profane person. He said, “lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau”, Heb 12: 16. A person having Christian teaching who goes into the world is just like a fornicator; he enters into an unholy alliance with a thing which is hateful to God! and he is like a profane person because he treats the things of God with contempt, and that is what Esau did. The Spirit of God, in the epistle to the Hebrews, puts that interpretation on Esau’s action, and this solemn word closes with this, “Thus Esau despised the birthright”.

Well now, God has placed these things on record in order that we might be warned. Remember this, if there are boys and girls here, that God is watching your growth, “the boys grew”; and He would warn you as to any deflection from the path in which your parents and those surrounding you are walking; He would warn you against it. On the other hand, we present to you the attractiveness of Christ. I know no one more attractive than the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He has come down from heaven, He has given Himself a ransom for me, and many here can say that, “the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, Gal 2: 20. Think of your Creator God, in the Person of the Lord Jesus, charging Himself on the cross with all your sins; and putting them away by the sacrifice of Himself, and then rising from the dead and taking a place in glory in the Father’s presence, and giving you to understand that through faith in Him you have a part with Him through all eternity.

May the Lord grant that none may despise these things, and may He bless His word for His Name’s sake!

BUCKIE

20^th September 1953

From The Word Proclaimed, 1957-58

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