GOD'S LOVE LEADING TO PRAISE
GOD’S LOVE LEADING TO PRAISE
In the dealings of God with Hezekiah, God brought the weight of death on his spirit, but it was really that he might learn how God could intervene in the power of resurrection, so that he might go up on the third day to the house of Jehovah. Before going up, however, there must be the application of the “cake of figs”. It is clear from Scripture that the characteristic of the fig is sweetness — see Judges 9: 11. So that the “cake of figs” would be a symbol of the sweetness of divine intervention where all was apparently hopeless. Hezekiah wrote after he had recovered, “But thou hast in love delivered my soul from the pit of destruction”, and, “Jehovah was purposed to save me” (Isaiah 38: 17, 20). He learned the love of God at the low point to which he was brought.
It is terrible to us naturally to realise that death is upon us as before God, but it is just there that the love of God is brought home to us. “For we being still without strength, in the due time Christ has died for the ungodly. For scarcely for the just man will one die, for perhaps for the good man some one might also dare to die; but God commends his love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us” (Romans 5: 6 - 8). The thought prominent in this scripture is not that the claims of God have been met — that aspect of the truth is seen in the blood as put upon the mercy-seat — but here it is that God’s love has been expressed in Christ having died for us, and this love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. The love of God is thus applied to us as the cake of figs was applied to Hezekiah. How wonderfully sweet it is to find that Christ has been into death to give expression to the love of God, and this is made a personal reality to each one who has the Spirit.
[p. 381] Those who live by the Spirit in relation to God, as having God’s love shed abroad in their hearts by the Spirit, know that it is in death that that love has reached them. “Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: ... but death reigned from Adam until Moses”; “Death reigned by the one”; “Sin has reigned in the power of death” (Romans 5:12; Romans 5:14; Romans 5:17; Romans 5:21). It is as the full weight of this comes on our spirits, we are prepared to appreciate that this dreadful thing — death — has become in the death of Christ the expression to us of the love of God. The Holy Spirit delights to apply that love to us by shedding it abroad in our hearts. The death of Christ thus becomes to us peculiarly full of sweetness. It is not simply that we believe that God loves us, but the Spirit pours His love into our hearts, and it becomes a power of life there. We are then amongst “the living”, who can praise God for His love, known through the death of Christ. The assembly is made up of such living persons. Normally, one who has the Spirit is occupied with God and with Christ and with the death of Christ. Of course, if we grieve the Spirit by some allowance of the flesh, we may be as unhappy as if we had not the Spirit at all.
There is something more. “On the third day thou shalt go up to the house of Jehovah” (2 Kings 20: 5). That implies the power of resurrection. The sign of it was that Jehovah “brought the shadow back on the degrees by which it had gone down on the dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward” (2 Kings 20: 11). God alone could reverse the whole natural course of things. This was the wonder which was done in the land. The fact that the shadow went backward ten degrees intimates that death is removed in the power of resurrection in a way that is known to faith, before the time when death will be publicly swallowed up in victory. While we are still here in the responsible life, where death is still manifestly upon all men, and, as to what is seen publicly, upon us too, we may know the power of Christ’s resurrection, and we may be risen with Him by the faith of the working of God who [p. 382] raised Him from among the dead. Going up on the third day implies the truth that is brought out in the epistle to the Colossians. Every one of us should apprehend this as a divine possibility.
Going up to the house of Jehovah would be for us entering into the privileges of the assembly. The youngest should understand that we come together in assembly first of all to think of the great witness of divine love in the death of Christ. Then it is our privilege to magnify Christ in every aspect of His person and glory, and in all that He is to the assembly as her glorious Head. Even the youngest and feeblest believer can say ‘Amen’ to every utterance which praises and magnifies Christ. This would prepare us in a very blessed way to “go up” into conscious association with Him as risen with Him, and to know that even as ascended to the Father, He owns us as His brethren. It is well to ask ourselves whether all this is known to us as a spiritual reality.
How could any lover of Christ keep away from the assembly if he realised that such precious things could be known there and enjoyed experimentally? It is sorrowful to think that any believer could willingly remain away from the Lord’s supper, for it is the Lord’s own personal appeal of love, intended to rally all His own. He would not have us to think that His supper is everything; He would have us to know something of what the “third day” speaks of and of going up. “And we will play upon my stringed instruments all the days of our life, in the house of Jehovah” (Isaiah 38: 20). As we “go up” in association with Christ as His brethren, there is an answer to God’s great thought, and He is praised in the same way that Christ praises Him as having come up out of death (see Psalm 22: 22). “Stringed instruments” suggests that a great variety of notes can be sounded and that spiritual skill is evidenced by those who play upon them.
The musical services that are carried on in the christian profession are an imitation in a material way of the true spiritual service. They do not require spiritual skill, for those [p. 383] who do not know God can take part in them. But those who have come up out of death by divine quickening can praise with Christ. He is the chief Musician, for as having glorified God in death and sin-bearing He can utter in resurrection every note of praise that is due to God. The praises of the assembly take character from the praises of Christ, for He hymns God in the midst of the assembly, and who would think of raising a discordant note? If we have known the pressure of death, and how divine love has reached us there, it is in view of our being free to “go up” in company with Christ to praise God whom he has made known to us in such a wondrous way.