“And they feared as they entered into the cloud” (Luke ix, 34).
TRANSITIONS in Christian experience are so rapid that the depths are never far from the heights. Who has not found a Communion Sabbath which marked a “height” rapidly descend into a “deep” on the following Monday? So the disciples found it on the Mount—as they enter the cloud, the happy desire which sprang to Peter’s lips soon freezes into fear.
Clouds. There are troubles of which we have no warning—they just spring on us. On the other hand, there are those which gather at such a distance that we are able to view them with some detachment. They have taken no definite shape and as yet are only in the region of things vaguely possible; consequently our prayerful attention to them is at most, general and undefined. But when the cloud takes shape and its implications begin to dawn on us we begin to fear, and this fear increases as we observe that the line of our lot lies directly under its approach. We are brought into contact with something which affects us profoundly, and over which we have no control. Our efforts to hold it off, or to grasp and contain it, prove futile and the resulting sense of weakness and frustration issues in fear—great fear. The coming cloud must carry one hundred possibilities, and to our tense imagination, every such possibility begets fear.
Our Reactions. We seek escape, and to this end we direct our prayers. It is here that a new fear lays hold on us—prayer seems to fail us. While we pray, the cloud continues to descend; continues to deepen; continues to gather us more closely to itself. Faith begins to panic and then to retreat. True, we make strenuous efforts to retain faith on the field, but our inability to do so adds to our confusion and dread. In this conflict there is no handicap so serious as a retreating faith.
We begin to complain. We feel that we have been specially selected for this peculiar trial and, self pity so fills us that we readily mistake our repining cries for the prayers of the New Heart. Meanwhile, the cloud as if possessing a Will of its own, and as if deliberately blind to our prayers and fears, continues to descend on us.
We change our prayer. “Lord, let this become no heavier, let me not know the fullness of grief it carries, command that it should come no nearer.” So we order our petitions. But the Sovereignty of the cloud continues and its disturbing intention is forced upon us. We must experience to the full whatever horrors of darkness upheave within its forbidding breast.
We retire within ourselves. In our confusion, we shut the Lord out and with Him all our comfort and strength. With steps weighted down with one doubt after another, we descend into a deeper and deeper misery. His faithfulness, his loving kindness, his ability to rule in our affairs are all things doubtful now. There is hardly one attribute of our glorious Lord we do not question. “If thou hadst been here; we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel; fails His mercy evermore?” We have cut ourselves off from Heaven and now have become a prey to Hell. Only too well does our enemy see our disadvantage, and punctual to the moment does he make use of it. A child of God is tempted to deny his Lord, and Satan is to provide the words of that denial. “Does God
really hear prayer? Did God ever answer your prayers? Where is your God now gone?” So cleverly does the Old Serpent set these questions that for the moment you are not sure who it is that asks them, and in the confusion, you rashly imagine that the words are God’s and that the voice is your own. “There is no hope for you in God,” he urges. And how well does he know where to place the emphasis. “For you,” he repeats, and as one forsaken, you find yourself replying, “It seems indeed that there is no help for me in God.” Then the emphasis is changed. “No help for you in God,” and if no help in God then there is help nowhere. For a soul under the handicap of a cloud and fighting for its very life—its faith—no news could be worse. You feel you are alone.
The cloud separates. Effectively, the cloud hides both friend and enemy; recognition of faces is impossible. Guilt past and present rises up before you. You feel guilty of deserting God as you feel yourself deserted. Who can live in the cold of this desolating isolation? Oh, the loneliness of a soul thus separated from its Lord. Yet, take courage—a voice of glorious assurance is on the way, and when it speaks its message will be for you; yes, for you alone.
The cloud remains, but into fear, isolation and torpidity, comes the voice. “This is my Beloved Son, hear ye him.” With what sweet authority it commands attention. What does God say about His Son and you? He speaks of recovery through your hearing from Him. Listen: “If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Away in that cloudless land where truth and mercy melt in everlasting embrace “He ever liveth to make intercession for us.” He has gone from your sight, but not from your interests—no, not for a moment. There, employed on your behalf, the Father is well pleased with both the Pleader and his plea. Rest in this. The lands of cloud, and of sunshine, are both of Him who is your advocate; and all is well everywhere. Your justification and your right to adoption in Christ’s name, are things which cannot be hid from the Father’s sight.
Deep unto deep doth call, and cloud calleth to cloud. “Hear ye him.” “Darkness was over all the land until the ninth hour.” “This is the hour of the powers of Darkness.” From the darkness of the Father’s holy and loving decision, from that darkness of your own sin’s making, from that darkness of the Son’s merciful choosing, comes a voice—a voice awful in its unfathomable isolation: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It is the voice of the beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased. Hear ye him, yes, hear him well, for that same cloud that hid the Father’s face was none other than the darkness of your sin’s sure wage. Hear the testimony that comes from the cloud—that cloud was the frown of a Just God upon you. He, the Son, has occupied the cloud for you, and well do the words testify that it is He who turns the shadow of death into the morning.
There on the cross, your darkness was occupied by Him who clothes himself with light as with a garment, and the infinite glory of His brightness has dispelled forever the deep cloud of your sin’s earning. Hear ye him, who as the Sun of Righteousness, now rises with His people into a cloudless and everlasting justification. Hear ye him: “There is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the
flesh but after the spirit.” Hear ye the glorious attestation put in his mouth and your ears by the Judge: “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more . . . I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions.” Hear ye him: “The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sin.”
He is with you now. To purchase a sure state of redemption and you in it, is indeed something to rejoice in, but His love has gone further. The protecting arm flung over you in redemption is directed by love, and love yearns for its object. He shuts you securely in the dark and then comes in to abide with you. “Certainly I will be with you.” Hear ye him: “Darkness hideth not from him.” It is not your sight of Him, but His sight of you that is the important thing. However dense the cloud and however much hidden from you, the Father beholds Him with you. There is no cloud on His glorious sufficiency as He is enthroned in glory and the Father sees no cloud on that same sufficiency as it with you on earth anywhere. All the sufficiency of His Saviourhood is with you. The cloud has changed your sense of things, but that is all. His love, sufficiency and presence remain unchanged. “Hear ye him.”
There is no cloud on that work attested by the Father, as completed, no cloud on that frank face that forgives all, no cloud on the promise that He will see you again and that your heart will rejoice. There is a land which is eternally cloudless because it is curseless. The Beloved has gone in to possess this good land for us. He is our trustee and our title in Him is without a cloud. More than that, it is with ineffable delight that the Father recognises our title in Him. Everywhere, on cloudy hill-top or deepest vale, wherever the Son as Saviour makes Himself known, the Father is will pleased with Him. The ordination of the cloud includes His reservation of a place for Himself in it with you. You may have to go down deep before you contact the everlasting arms, but God’s “underneath” is always at a level lower than any cloud. Under all clouds is the covenant ordered in all things and sure, and the impossibility where-with your God cannot lie, marks the same impossibility by which He is bound not to forsake you. His covenant includes your cloud and your Saviour in it with you, and at its centre, the darkest cloud is bright through the presence of your covenanted Saviour. “Hear ye him.”—Penuel.
The helmet is of continual use. We shall need it as long as our war with sin and Satan lasts. The Christian is not beneath Hope, so long as above ground; nor above Hope so long as he is beneath heaven. Indeed, when once he enters the gates of that glorious city, then farewell Hope, and welcome Love, for ever. He may say with the holy martyr: “Armour becomes earth, but robes heaven.” Hope goes into the field, and waits on the Christian till the last battle be fought, and the field cleared; and then Faith and Hope together carry him in the chariot of the promise to heaven’s door, where they deliver up his soul into the hands of Love and Joy, which stand ready to conduct him into the blissful presence of God.—William Gurnall.