THE BOW IN THE CLOUD
God often sees fit to bring upon His people, in His ways with them, the cloud of the shadow of death; but when He brings the cloud, the bow is always to be seen in it, and that is what God would have our hearts directed to at this time—the bow that is to be seen in the cloud. The death of our beloved young brother was sudden and unexpected, but God’s ways are perfect. Death, as coming before the Christian, always directs his thoughts to the death of Christ, and there is a wonderful bow to be seen there. Nothing in the physical creation is so resplendent in glory as the rainbow; it has a wondrous blend of glories, and is a most impressive sight. So God would direct our thoughts at this time to the death of Christ. There death was seen and met in all its power, and there divine love and power shone out in all their brilliance.
The rights of God, challenged by the incoming of sin, were met by the devotedness of Christ, so that God could come out in mercy to our beloved young brother, and to us all. His holiness was outraged by sin, and all was met by the perfect devotedness of Christ even to death, so that love can come out to us, and establish in Christ beyond death an order of life in which that holy love can be enjoyed in conditions with which nothing can interfere. How wonderfully all this has come out in Christ!
Death to us is weakness. There was the appearance of greatest weakness when Jesus died: “He has been crucified in weakness”; but what marvellous power was there! He cried with a loud voice, and He delivered up His spirit. He was in complete control of the situation, so that God might be seen moving in the glory of the way He has taken, and that death might be turned to account to express the greatness of His love. And all this is the portion of believers.
Referring to the laying down of His life, the Lord says, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it again. I have received this commandment of my Father” (John 10:18); and, in the preceding verse, “On this account the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again”. So that there is the Father’s commandment; there is the devoted obedience of Christ, all with a view, not only to laying down His life, but taking it again in conditions of power and glory beyond death; and our beloved brother will have his part in this, as we all shall. There is also the Father’s love shining on Christ because He devoted Himself; there is the devotion of Christ, in all its fragrance, as entering into death; there is victory over death, seen in the resurrection of Christ. All these things, and much more, make up a wonderful blend of glories which God would bring into our souls at this time in the presence of the cloud of bereavement and death.
So God would lift us up; He gives us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is wonderful what has come out in the death of Christ: the love of God in all its reality, in His Son! “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? ... For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life ... shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”, Rom 8: 35-39. Certainly death has not separated our young brother from the love of Christ; rather has it been the means the Lord has taken to carry him away even now from the sorrows of the pilgrim pathway, finding his eternal portion in Christ. Well may we rejoice: the bow is in the cloud! God has shone out in Christ, and in Christ there has appeared the moral excellence of a Man according to God, devoting His life, even to the laying of it down in death, that He might take it again.
The bow is in the cloud. Every time God brings death to bear on our spirits, He looks on the bow; His glory is there; and then it is for us to look there too. What a divine blend of glories—the glory of God on the one hand, and the glory of a Man on the other, perfectly blended in this wonderful fact of the death of Christ! May the Lord increase our appreciation of it, and comfort our hearts at this present time!
LONDON
At a burial meeting
From Words of Truth 1956