THE VALUE OF ONE DAY
THE VALUE OF ONE DAY
Mark 1: 21 - 39; Mark 14: 17, 18; Mark 15: 42 to end
I should like to present a few suggestions which the Lord might use to help us to put more value upon one day.
I believe the Lord is giving a sense in the hearts of His people everywhere, that we have not many days left; the time is short, as scripture says. However short it is, one would desire that the Lord might help us to look upon one day with the desire that there might be more for God in each day as it comes round. Apart from the imminence of the Lord’s return, we have but few days in any case, and the scripture exhorts us to number them. We have not a large reserve of days, possibly we have but a few. Jacob could say that few and evil had been the days of the years of his pilgrimage, he admitted that they were few and evil. The days of our years are three score and ten, or if, by reason of strength, they are four score yet they soon pass away. How quickly they go past, apart from the fact that the Lord is coming! I would desire that we should all get a sense of the preciousness of each day that is left to us. None of us can say much about tomorrow, indeed, we can say nothing definite about it. We can only speak of what is available to us today; we can only say about tomorrow, “If the Lord will “.
Now I desire to touch upon two days of the Lord’s wonderful life, what days they were! I believe every day of the life of Jesus was equivalent to a thousand years, in the divine estimate. As God looked down on one day of the life of Jesus there was as much for Him and more, than in any other life of a thousand years. There was more in the life of Jesus in one day than in the life of Methuselah — life of nearly a thousand years. One day with the Lord is as a thousand years.
I would like to present to you what the divine thought is about our days, about each day as it comes to us in our lives here. First of all, and necessarily so, there is to be the recognition of the Creator in each of our hearts. Some may say, “I thought we had passed that”, but we never pass it; the scripture says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge”, Psalm 19: 1, 2. God has something to say every day; as the heavens appear to our eyes in the morning,
God is speaking to the hearts of men and to our hearts. God wants us to listen and hear so that every day there should be an answer from our hearts to Him as Creator, who as Paul says, “is blessed for ever, Amen”, Romans 1: 25. That indicates that for ever the Creator will be blessed. I believe that word “blessed” means there eulogised, spoken well of. There is not much that man has done and made that one could say much good about today. I think we are near the day when men will not bless their own works, they will wish that aeroplanes, motors, wireless, had never been discovered; there will be nothing good to say about them. These discoveries will bring such woe, and distress, and misery, which are indeed already beginning. Men will not bless their works then, but the Creator is to be blessed for ever, and God desires that He should be blessed from our hearts every day and every night. As every day dawns with the heavens declaring His glory, God desires a response from our hearts in blessing the Creator.
In the early church they gathered together and said, “Lord, thou art God which hast made heaven and earth and the sea and all that in them is” — we need to recognise that. Is it not well to recognise these things and to bless the Creator everywhere and every day?
God desires, from our hearts, each day, the lowly acknowledgment of His might and of His glory.
Then there is another feature that I believe He wants in us every day, that is true dependence. One of the disciples said, “Teach us to pray”, and the Lord said, “When ye pray say ... Give us day by day our daily bread”. I do not refer to the previous part of the prayer, but the Lord as recorded in Matthew’s gospel, said they were to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”. I believe He is bringing us back to that, because the prosperity of the last thirty years has injured many, and much of the true spirit of dependence has been weakened, but God is helping us through adversity, to return more truly and livingly, to the spirit of dependence on Him for what He gives us each day. If we look into our hearts, we shall find that most of our fears are about tomorrow. Most of the things that are weighing upon us, and filling us with perplexity as to what might come, have to do with tomorrow. The Lord did not speak of tomorrow, He said, “Give us this day — this day — our daily bread”.
How perfectly He adorned His teaching; nothing makes one more ashamed than the life of Jesus. Think of each of His days; from where did His bread come? Forty days He spent without bread, He was waiting for God; never would He move without God, as He trod His way through this scene. Apparently the Lord never had money; when he wanted a penny, He said, “Show me a penny”, yet the Lord did not starve as a Man here. Where did He sleep? He had not a home, He had not what the foxes have, nor what the birds of the air have. Each day was a matter for God to provide for Him. “Give us this day our daily bread.” God sought to teach the children of Israel that, as they went through the wilderness. Each morning the dew came on the face of the wilderness and on the dew was the manna, the bread from heaven, from God, for the day. There was a vast company of people in the wilderness; you could understand that many might have thought, What about tomorrow? There is the bread now, but what about tomorrow? They had to learn to depend upon God for each day.
How Elijah was tested as to that and instructed. There he was by the brook Cherith, he drank of the water of the brook and morning and evening the ravens brought him bread and flesh. If Elijah had not learned to depend upon God he might have said, “What about tomorrow?” It is so unnatural for a raven to leave flesh — but Elijah had to learn to live day by day in dependence upon God who said, “I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there”. The things which we think are so adverse, so destructive, and the last source from which we expect support, are often God’s ravens which He has commanded, and they have to obey His commands. God makes a situation that looks difficult and hopeless to yield meat for His people. He will do this to the end, so we have to learn to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”.
There is one more feature that I want to refer to. David says, “So will I sing forth thy name for ever, performing my vows from day to day”, Psalm 61: 8, N.T. As each day comes round we should pay our vows, what we have put our hands to, what we have committed ourselves to; we should pay that each day. The Lord wants that, He wants each day to be filled in with the payment of the vows. That is the sort of day that God loves, the kind of day that marked the life of Jesus. He was always seen in perfect subjection and dependence, and accepted the place of outward weakness. “When he was reviled, he reviled not again, and when he suffered he threatened not.” He never asserted His rights anywhere. He never found His portion on earth from the joys of this life. He could thank God for the bread, and fish, and ask for a drink of water from the woman of Samaria, but He never once found His portion upon this earth. He entered this scene saying, “Lo, I come to do thy will O God”; every day He did the will of God.
We have most of us put our hands to things; we have baptised our households, we have been baptised ourselves. It is a bond we have entered into, to hold our households and ourselves for God, as living outside this world’s system. God finds great pleasure in those who pay their vows every day. Most of us put our hands to the cup and bless it, the communion of the blood of Christ, the bond of the fellowship of His death. God’s will is that it should be paid every day, not on the Lord’s Day only, but every day of our lives that vow should be paid in the sight of God. We have put our hands to the bread which we break, the communion of the body of Christ, for we being many are one bread, one body, for we all partake of that one loaf, we are connected livingly with one another. God desires that that should be recognised and the vow paid every day. This indicates a little how each day is to be filled in, we shall not be idle if these things are before us for the day.
And then dependent upon Him daily for our bread, not only materially, but in every way. Every morning our ear opened to listen and to hear what He has to say. The Lord said, “He wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the instructed”, Isaiah 50: 4. Think of a day beginning like that! Such would be one of the days of heaven upon the earth. Then we are to step out each day ready to pay our vows. I am sure such days as those would have value in the sight of God. We would not have to say at the end, “Few and evil have been my days”. They may be few but they would not be evil; they would be the days of heaven upon earth.
Now, just a word as to these two days of the life of Jesus. Every movement that is of God amongst His people springs from an impression of Christ. There is no value in what we do as a matter of duty, it does not yield anything for God; what yields for God, is living movement springing from an impression of Christ in the heart.
So I would like to speak of this first day of which we read in the life of Jesus. It is one of the early days of Jesus in His public life. What a day it was! It began in the morning with His ear opened to hear; all His days began like that. Every single day began with His ear opened to listen to what God had to say, not one day did He step out unmarked by that feature. Then let us consider the features that filled in His day. He went into the synagogue and sat down and taught. Most of us would have said that that was a good day’s work, and that we were entitled afterwards to rest. Those who profess to follow the Lord would say that was a hard day, but it was not the end for Jesus, there was a man in the synagogue with a demon, and He meets that with power; He does not leave it to anyone else, He takes it up and deals with it, He casts out the demon. Then He went to the house of Simon with James and John, not to rest, for Peter’s wife’s mother was lying ill with a fever, and immediately they tell Him of her! The Lord had spent the morning teaching, and dealing with the power of Satan; then He went to Peter’s house, and immediately they told Him of the illness, He is available for that; He went in and took her by the hand and raised her up.
Next we read, “evening being come, when the sun had gone down”. It says that “man goes to his labour until the evening”; he is entitled to rest then, but the evening being come and the sun having set they brought the whole city to the door. He goes out and healed many of their diseases, and cast out many demons; He is available to them right into the night. Then very early in the morning He goes away alone to pray. If we put that day alongside of our days, we shall understand that one of them is like a thousand years to God. The memorial of those days is stored up in the golden pot that has manna, there is a divine memorial of each of those days treasured up before God, they are valued at their true worth by Him, and every day was like that one.
Now I want to say a word or two about the last day of Jesus on earth. I read the passages that record from evening to evening of that last day. That day began as always, with His ear being opened for instruction for the day; He knew where the road was leading, but He was committed to the will of God. He could see the direction in which the path was leading Him. In holy submission, which will ever bow our hearts, there was a shrinking from that day, yet He pursues it; He says, “Not my will”. He desires instruction for the day, though shrinking from the way it would take Him; He indicates how perfectly the will of God was going to govern Him. The day, as we read it in Mark, begins with the passover, the evening having come He goes with the twelve into the city to keep the passover. Then He went through the anguish of the presence of Judas; the sorrow of that was more than sufficient for one day, it was something intolerable to the heart of the Lord. Then He instituted the supper; what an act that was! It has a present living voice to this day, for we come together on the first day of the week, and as we look on those emblems we do not go back 2000 years in our minds. It might have been today, it has such a wondrous meaning to our hearts.
Then the Lord goes out to Gethsemane; I do not touch on the other experiences of that day, but it would be well for us to look into them for ourselves, especially as presented in the gospel of John; chapters 15 to 19 are all one day in the life of Jesus — the last day. But I want to pursue the line of Mark’s gospel. The Lord goes out to Gethsemane. Peter had spoken of following Him, but a moment was coming when no one could follow. Peter thought he could, but the Lord said to him, “thou canst not follow me now”. Where is the road leading? The Psalm puts it in language that conveys wonderful meaning, it says, “Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy cataracts; all thy breakers and thy billows are gone over me”, Psalm 42: 7. That was where the road was leading, to the mighty cataracts of Calvary. What an impression for our hearts! The cataracts roar in all their mighty volume, all the waters of the great deep break.
The Lord in Gethsemane, anticipated that in His spirit. The road was leading that way for Jesus and He bowed to the will of God in all that came upon Him. Who can tell what it all meant? The curse — He was made a curse for us — our hearts cannot fathom such a thing, that is where the road led, to the place of the curse. It led to where the rod of God’s judgment fell upon Him; it led to the impenetrable darkness of Calvary, to the forsaking of Jesus; it led to the wrath of God against sin, to the death and burial of the Lord. That last day contained all that and more. It is divided into hours, it is so great, indicating that we cannot take it in as a whole. The Spirit of God speaks about evening being come, and then the third hour, the sixth hour, the ninth hour, and then again the evening, when His precious body is wrapped in linen and laid in a new tomb where man had never been laid. These are the last days of Jesus, and what shall we say about them? They are stored up in the golden pot that had manna, a blessed memorial of every day of those thirty-three years — every one of them worth a thousand years in the sight of God. They come to us, the blessed savour of them, to help us as to our days. What are we doing with our days? God wants the days of His people to take character from the days of Jesus, to be marked by the spirit of dependence and subjection, and by a daily rendering of vows. God would find much pleasure thus in His people.
I only desire to say again, that the Lord is giving a definite sense that the days will not be many. We should all desire that in these closing days God might find increasing pleasure in the lives of His people. The Lord grant it may be so.