The Words of Jesus Part 2

Reader, do you realize your privilege--living under the dispensation of the Spirit? Is it your daily prayer that He may come down in all the plenitude of His heavenly graces on your soul, even "as rain upon the mown gra.s.s, and showers that water the earth?" You cannot live without Him; there can be not one heavenly aspiration, not one breathing of love, not one upward glance of faith, without His gracious influences.

Apart from him, there is no preciousness in the word, no blessing in ordinances, no permanent sanctifying results in affliction. As the angel directed Hagar to the hidden spring, this blessed agent, true to His name and office, directs His people to the waters of comfort, giving new glory to the promises, investing the Saviour's character and work with new loveliness and beauty.

How precious is the t.i.tle which this "Word of Jesus" gives Him--THE COMFORTER! What a word for a sorrowing world! The Church militant has its tent pitched in a "valley of _tears_." The name of the divine visitant who comes to her and ministers to her wants, is _Comforter_.

Wide is the family of the afflicted, but He has a healing balm for all--the weak, the tempted, the sick, the sorrowing, the bereaved, the dying! How different from other "sons of consolation?" _Human friends_--a look may alienate; adversity may estrange; death must separate! The "Word of Jesus" speaks of One whose attribute and prerogative is to "abide with us for ever;" superior to all vicissitudes--surviving death itself!

And surely if anything else can endear His mission of love to His Church, it is that He comes direct from G.o.d, as the fruit and gift of _Jesus' intercession_--"_I_ will pray the Father." This holy dove of peace and comfort is let out by the hand of Jesus from the ark of covenant mercy within the veil! Nor is the gift more glorious than it is free. Does the word, the look, of a suffering child get the eye and the heart of an _earthly_ father? "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask Him?" It is He who makes these "words of Jesus" "winged words."

"HE SHALL BRING ALL THINGS TO YOUR REMEMBRANCE, WHATSOEVER I HAVE SAID UNTO YOU."

9TH DAY.

"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"--

"Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more."--John viii. 11.

The Gracious Verdict.

How much more tender is Jesus than the tenderest of earthly friends? The Apostles, in a moment of irritation would have called down fire from heaven on obstinate sinners. Their Master rebuked the unkind suggestion.

Peter, the trusted but treacherous disciple, expected nothing but harsh and merited reproof for faithlessness. He who knew well how that heart would be bowed with penitential sorrow, sends first the kindest of messages, and then the gentlest of rebukes, "Lovest thou me?" The watchmen in the Canticles smote the bride, tore off her veil, and loaded her with reproaches. When she found her lost Lord, there was not one word of upbraiding! "So slow is He to anger," says an ill.u.s.trious believer, "so ready to forgive, that when His prophets lost all patience with the people so as to make intercession _against_ them, yet even then could He not be got to cast off this people whom He foreknew, for his great name's sake."

The guilty sinner to whom He speaks this comforting "word," was frowned upon by her accusers. But, if others spurned her from their presence, "_Neither do I condemn thee._" Well it is to fall into the hands of this blessed Saviour-G.o.d, for great are His mercies.

Are we to infer from this, that He winks at sin? Far from it. His blood, His work--Bethlehem, and Calvary, refute the thought! Ere the guilt even of one solitary soul could be washed out, He had to descend from His everlasting throne to agonise on the accursed tree. But this "word of Jesus" is a word of tender encouragement to every sincere, broken-hearted penitent, that crimson sins, and scarlet sins, are no barriers to a free, full, everlasting forgiveness. The Israelite of old, gasping in his agony in the sands of the wilderness, had but to "_look_ and _live_;" and still does He say, "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." Up-reared by the side of his own cross there was a monumental column for all Time, only second to itself in wonder. Over the head of the dying felon is the superscription written for despairing guilt and trembling penitence, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners."

"He never yet," says Charnock, "put out a dim candle that was lighted at the Sun of Righteousness." "Whatever our guiltiness be," says Rutherford, "yet when it falleth into the sea of G.o.d's mercy, it is but like a drop of blood fallen into the great ocean."

Reader, you may be the chief of sinners, or it may be the chief of backsliders; your soul may have started aside like a broken bow. As the bankrupt is afraid to look into his books, you may be afraid to look into your own heart. You are hovering on the verge of despair.

Conscience, and the memory of unnumbered sins, is uttering the desponding verdict, "I condemn thee." Jesus has a kinder word--a more cheering declaration--"_I_ condemn thee _not_: go, and sin no more!"

"AND ALL WONDERED AT THE GRACIOUS _WORDS_ THAT PROCEEDED OUT OF HIS MOUTH."

10TH DAY.

"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"--

"Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother."--Matt. xii. 50.

The Wondrous Relationship.

As if no solitary earthly type were enough to image forth the love of Jesus, He a.s.sembles into one verse a group of the tenderest earthly relationships. Human affection has to focus its loveliest hues, but all is too little to afford an exponent of the depth and intensity of _His_.

"As one whom his _mother_ comforteth;" "my _sister_, my _spouse_." He is "_Son_," "_Brother_" "_Friend_"--all in one; "cleaving closer than any brother."

And can we wonder at such language? Is it merely figurative, expressive of more than the reality?--He gave _Himself_ for us; after that pledge of His affection we must cease to marvel at any expression of the interest He feels in us. Anything He can _say_ or _do_ is infinitely less than what He _has done_.

Believer! art thou solitary and desolate? Has bereavement severed earthly ties? Has the grave made forced estrangements,--sundered the closest links of earthly affection? In Jesus thou hast filial and fraternal love combined; He is the Friend of friends, whose presence and fellowship compensates for all losses, and supplies all blanks; "He setteth the solitary in families." If thou art orphaned, friendless, comfortless here, remember there is in the Elder Brother on the Throne a love deep as the unfathomed ocean, boundless as Eternity?

And who are those who can claim the blessedness spoken of under this wondrous imagery? On whom does He lavish this unutterable affection? No outward profession will purchase it. No church, no priest, no ordinances, no denominational distinctions. It is on those who are possessed of _holy characters_. "He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven!" He who reflects the mind of Jesus; imbibes His Spirit; takes His Word as the regulator of his daily walk, and makes His glory the great end of his being; he who lives _to_ G.o.d and _with_ G.o.d, and _for_ G.o.d; the humble, lowly, Christ-like, Heaven-seeking Christian;--he it is who can claim as his own this wondrous heritage of love! If it be a worthy object of ambition to be loved by the good and the great on earth, what must it be to have an eye of love ever beaming upon us from the Throne, in comparison of which the attachment here of brother, sister, kinsman, friend--all combined--pales like the stars before the rising sun! Though we are often ashamed to call Him "Brother," "He is not ashamed to call us _brethren_." He looks down on poor worms, and says, "_The same_ is my mother, and sister, and brother!" "I will write upon them," He says in another place, "my new name." Just as we write our name on a book to tell that it belongs to us; so Jesus would write His own name on _us_, the wondrous volumes of His grace, that they may be read and pondered by princ.i.p.alities and powers.

Have we "known and believed this love of G.o.d?" Ah, how poor has been the requital! Who cannot subscribe to the words of one, whose name was in all the churches,--"Thy love has been as a shower; the return but a dew-drop, and that dew-drop stained with sin."

"IF A MAN LOVE ME, HE WILL KEEP _MY WORDS_; AND MY FATHER WILL LOVE HIM, AND WE WILL COME UNTO HIM, AND MAKE OUR ABODE WITH HIM."

11TH DAY.

"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"--

"I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you."--John xiv.

18.

The Befriended Orphans.

Does the Christian's path lie all the way through Beulah? Nay, he is forewarned it is to be one of "much tribulation." He has his Marahs as well as his Elims--his valleys of Baca as well as his grapes of Eschol.

Often is he left unbefriended to bear the brunt of the storm--his gourds fading when most needed--his sun going down while it is yet day--his happy home and happy heart darkened in a moment with sorrows with which a stranger (with which often a _brother_) cannot intermeddle. There is _One_ Brother "born for adversity," who _can_. How often has that voice broken with its silvery accents the m.u.f.fled stillness of the sick-chamber or death-chamber! "'_I_ will not leave you comfortless:'

the world _may_, friends _may_, the desolations of bereavement and death _may_; but _I will not_; you will be alone, yet _not_ alone, for I your Saviour and your G.o.d will be with you!"

Jesus seems to have an especial love and affection for His orphaned and comfortless people. A father loves his sick and sorrowing child most; of all his household, he occupies most of his thoughts. Christ seems to delight to lavish His deepest sympathy on "him that hath no helper." It is in the hour of sorrow His people have found Him most precious; it is in "the wilderness" He speaks most "comfortably unto them;" He gives them "their vineyards from thence:" in the places they least expected, wells of heavenly consolation break forth at their feet. As Jonathan of old, when faint and weary, had his strength revived by the honey he found dropping in the tangled thicket: so the faint and woe-worn children of G.o.d find "honey in the wood"--everlasting consolation dropping from the tree of life, in the midst of the th.o.r.n.i.e.s.t thickets of affliction.

Comfortless ones, be comforted! Jesus often makes you _portionless_ here, to drive you to Himself, the _everlasting portion_. He often dries every rill and fountain of earthly bliss, that He may lead you to say, "All my springs are in Thee." "He seems intent," says one who could speak from experience, "to fill up every gap love has been forced to make; one of his errands from heaven was to bind up the broken-hearted."

How beautifully in one amazing verse does he conjoin the depth and tenderness of his comfort with the certainty of it--"As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you, and ye SHALL be comforted!"

Ah, how many would not have their wilderness-state altered, with all its trials, and gloom, and sorrow, just that they might enjoy the unutterable sympathy and love of this Comforter of the comfortless, one ray of whose approving smile can dispel the deepest earthly gloom? As the cl.u.s.tering constellations shine with intensest l.u.s.tre in the midnight sky, so these "words of Jesus" come out like ministering angels in the deep dark night of earthly sorrow. We may see no beauty in them when the world is sunny and bright; but He has laid them up in store for us for the dark and cloudy day.

"THESE THINGS HAVE I TOLD YOU, THAT WHEN THE TIME COMETH, YE MAY REMEMBER THAT I TOLD YOU OF THEM."

12TH DAY.

"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"--

"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."--John xvi. 33.

The World Conquered.

And shall I be afraid of a world already conquered? The Almighty Victor, within view of His Crown, turns round to His faint and weary soldiers, and bids them take courage. They are not fighting their way through untried enemies. The G.o.d-Man Mediator "_knows_ their sorrows." "He was in _all points_ tempted." "Both He (_i. e._, Christ) who sanctifieth, and they (His people) who are sanctified, are all of one (nature)." As the great Precursor, he heads the pilgrim band, saying "I will show you the path of life." The way to heaven is consecrated by His footprints.