THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR
Matthew 11:28-30; Revelation 22:16
Our sister who we bury today was a believer with whom one has enjoyed fellowship for a long time. Her death is an opportunity to reflect in a general way on her qualities and virtues, on the things we have shared together, and especially on the shared knowledge we have had of the Lord Jesus Himself. It is a blessed privilege to speak with one with whom we have a mutual Friend, and we were attached to that Person for the same reasons. We have been able to share that blessed common ground and express it in remembering His death in the breaking of bread. These are wonderful portions for the Christian believer into which our sister entered so fully.
But these passages of scripture are not about a believer or a saint, they are about the Lord Jesus, and what they have in common is that the Lord Jesus is drawing attention to Himself. You will notice how many “I”s are in italic in this Bible. It is a very precious thing to know a saint who has walked with the Lord in the way in which He speaks of here: “Take my yoke upon you”. What a blessed privilege it is to find the fulfilment of a life in walking with Jesus, committed to and attached to Him, and taking His path, the path of the will of God. He says “I am meek and lowly in heart”; how wonderful it is to walk with such a One. The lowliness of Jesus is something I trust we all have an impression of. No pride, no guile, no dissimulation marked the Lord Jesus; He took the bondman’s place. Think of that – taking that ground in relation to His disciples, even washing their feet. What a wonderful thing meekness is. It means that He never took on anything for His own advantage, or considered for His own interests or benefits. What a Person to walk with! We may walk with someone else, and if the path gets rough we may talk about its inconvenience, or about how things might get better, or how narrow and difficult the way is, but you never hear the Lord Jesus speaking like that. He would not seek to make the path easier for Himself but He would make it easier for us. What a Person He is to walk with, beloved. Every footstep He took was in the interests of somebody else – firstly His God and Father, whom in love He had come to serve; and then in love for His own. It is a blessed thing to know such a One who would sustain power for life here in all the vicissitudes and trials of the way, to know that we are attached to One who walks like this.
I read at the end of the Bible where He says, “I Jesus”. He makes reference to Himself, “I am the root and offspring of David”. How wonderful it is to understand that everything for the believer finds its origin in Himself. He will crown everything for the believer as well, and He will be with us every step of the way which ends in this wonderful result. I like this reference to the “morning star”. The Lord Jesus is also referred to in Scripture as the Sun. Malachi speaks of Him prophetically as the “Sun of righteousness”, Mal 4:2. Psalm 19 speaks of a tent spread for the sun (v.4); nothing is hid from the heat thereof (v.6); these scriptures speak of the day when the Lord Jesus will come, when He will appear in glory. But the morning star is seen while the night still reigns. It is not the means of finding warmth, as the sun is in the daytime, but it is something we can see at night and it tells us that the morning is about to break. How we should live in the faith of that, as our sister did, that the morning is about to break. There are two other references in scripture to the “morning star”. 2 Peter 1 verse 19 is one, then the Lord speaks of it to the overcomer at Thyatira (Rev 2:28), because it is something we need while we are here. Peter speaks of it arising in our hearts, which is something we should experience now.
What a test that is. The imminence of the coming of Christ is to be held in our hearts, and the proof that it is in our hearts is that it governs our lives and the way we go on. It does not only make us happy, but it acts as a rule of life, that the Lord Jesus is about to appear. He speaks of it here Himself – I am “the bright and morning star”. We can say as to our sister among others that they had a brightness, there was something in their hearts that shone, and it came from Christ. The prospect they had was not that things might get better one day, but this was their present joy in their lives, and so it might be for us. What a wonderful thing it is that our Lord Jesus should speak of Himself in that way, as if urging upon us to see His brightness and have that colour and light in our hearts.
May He bless the word.
Word given at a burial at Sunbury
12 April 2019
D. Andrew Burr