THE LORD'S PRESENCE IN THE MIDST AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
THE LORD’S PRESENCE IN THE MIDST AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
- No cloud and a sense of accomplished redemption; John 20.
- The soul beside itself, like the queen of Sheba.
- Worship.
- Edification.
Some come in faith and enjoy His presence.
Some come in conviction and get blessing.
Some come from imitation.
Growth in truth is like a pyramid: the base must be enlarged as the height is raised.
You must have the antitype before having the type,
[p. 447] or you will not understand the latter, which brings the antitype within our natural comprehension.
Light is come; it exposes and discloses. It repelled in Old Testament times; it now distresses, but attracts.
Balaam acted against the people just as they were going to enter on heavenly ground; so in Corinthians Satan acted. They, the Corinthians, were self-indulgent and boastful.
I am sure that the reading of the word and prayer are necessary, and that great help comes to us through ministry; yet there is another exercise which surpasses all the rest; indeed, the others are, I might say, invalid without it. I mean meditation. “Meditate on these things; give thyself wholly to them”. (1 Timothy 4: 15) However much you may take in, and receive in an honest and good heart, there must be, like the grain of wheat, months underground, unseen by any mortal eye, a secret germination before there is the blade - anything to be seen. The deeper the truth I receive, the longer the time of meditation before it characterises me. Sitting before the Lord, one does not appear to be doing anything, and yet that is the very time in which the peculiar lines of His mind and pleasure for one are acquired.
Faith is dependence on God and independence of everything human to sustain it.
To walk in His life down here, eating His flesh and drinking His blood, acting as He acted, though apparently atomic, as all life is, rears up a monument for all eternity - a great coral reef. One is so often trying to do some great thing, instead of the greatest of things, which is always at hand, namely, to live here as Christ did; and this act endures for all eternity, as [p. 448] the power of it has existed from all eternity. Were I simply set on living Christ here, it would abundantly occupy me as well as fit me for any service.
Beginning my day with Christ, storing up the manna, and finding not a moment of my time uninteresting or unoccupied, because I have still another and a fresh step to learn. The same step is not set the second time. Act the step before you this moment like Christ, and if you do, it will be recalled and revived at the judgment-seat; but if not, that particular brilliant is lost, and you will never wear it. You will have plenty to do all day, and the man who lives Christ most in his daily life and ways is always the most fit and prepared for special services, for leading a forlorn hope. A slave can adorn the gospel of Christ in all things.
In John’s baptism the Lord took His place with the godly ones here upon earth; He cut Himself off from that which connected Him with Judaism. There were three parts in His life. He lived a private life for thirty years; then for three years He was the servant of God, until His service culminated in the mount of transfiguration; then He comes down from this point, after He had been the perfect Man both in private life and in public life, to become the victim - to meet the judgment of God which we had incurred for ourselves; He sets His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem. And now we are entitled to glory, because the Person who paid our debt has been raised by glory.