THE Church of God is the scene of almost perpetual contest and trouble: and in the Scriptures of Truth it is presented under emblems significant of the fact.
It is like the Ark riding on the billows of the deluge, like the vessel of bulrushes in which Moses was exposed to the waters of the Nile, like the “bush that burned and was not consumed,” like the Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace, Daniel in the den of lions, the beloved disciple in exile at Patmos. Nor is it difficult to perceive how this should be. The great Adversary bears no good will to this Church. It is composed of those who were once his slaves, but who were taken out from under his power with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, a hand the strength of which he was made to feel, and whereby his head has been bruised. Nor has the world ever been otherwise than inimically disposed to persons who from their position, their character, their life, are a standing testimony against them that their works are evil. And moreover in the present state there is always more or less of the old leaven mixed up with that which is of a gracious nature, partly in believers themselves, and partly in those who join themselves to them under a fair profession, but who sooner or later shew, that “they are not all Israel who are of Israel.” We need not wonder therefore to hear this Church addressed in the Word of God in the language of severe castigation, language which at first sight might seem to be totally inappropriate to a company of saints, to be unsuitable to those who are the members of Christ’s mystical body, and not at all required by such as bear the name of children of God. We have a passage of this kind in the part of Scripture from which the verses now read for exposition have been taken.
Verse 7th: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
The Apostle addresses some of the Jewish nation who had been brought to the knowledge of Christ, who profess his name, and appeared to live devotedly to his cause. He speaks to them, you will observe, as a people that had the knowledge of God, for the injunction he lays upon them evidently takes it for granted that they knew Him to whom he calls upon them to submit.
The injunction he gives seems to have reference to what he had immediately before said of the spirit that breathes in men naturally: “Know ye not that the spirit that is in us lusteth to envy.” And farther to what he had said respecting the only effectual remedy provided for such people. “But he giveth more grace.” In the view of these two things, the one very humbling to them, fitted to make them ashamed of themselves, and serving to account for the quarrels and the confusion that the Apostle appears to have known had risen among them: the other equally fitted to preserve them from despair, and yielding to the envy that was in them, as if their case were hopeless, their disease incurable.
“Submit yourselves therefore to God.” It is a becoming thing in persons so depraved, who cannot trust to their own hearts without proving themselves fools, and who if left to the spirit that is in them, must be miserable in themselves and a pest to all around them, to submit themselves to God. This is a disposition and exercise directly opposed to the spirit in men naturally that lusts to envy. It strikes at the root of this spirit, and if only the habit through grace were maintained of in all things submitting themselves to God, there would be no room left for the operation in them of the spirit that lusteth to envy. And if it be asked, Will he accept of this submission? There is a satisfactory answer supplied in the gracious character in which he is represented as giving more grace, according to what is written, “He giveth grace to the humble, whilst He resisteth the proud.” You may say then, that if men are at all alive to the subtlety and the power and the malignity of this spirit of envy, you ought to flee from yourselves, and submit yourselves to God. And if you have any apprehension of the riches of His grace and kindness of His love you will be induced by the very character in which He exhibits Himself to yield obedience to the injunction “submit yourselves therefore to God.” “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
It is supposed that it was in the spirit of envy that this fallen angel was moved to seek the destruction of our first parents and of all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation. We may therefore regard it as very much the temper of the Devil when human nature lusts to seek gratification of its depraved desires in the way of envy: disliking anything that is good and eminent and blessed in others if we don’t happen to possess it, or disliking any superiority which they may appear to have over us, whilst we assume that they and we possess something of the same spirit; disliking this to such a degree as to aim at blasting that which others have, if so be they may be reduced to a level with us. It is in keeping with these things then to believe that this Malignant Spirit will do what he can to stir up in the Church of God this mode of lust. He will with his hateful breath labour to blow a spark into a flame; and just as a fire of coals needs only a large supply of air to make it burn vehemently, so the spirit in man that lusteth to envy needs nothing more than breath of the Prince of the power of the air, idle, groundless imaginations, swelling up into large dimensions, in order to make the fire of mischief blaze furiously, and threaten to involve all around it in one common ruin. And it is quite in keeping with these remarks to suppose that if Satan gets an inkling that there is in the Church of God any disposition to go against the spirit of envy, and to oppose it in the way that is here pointed out of submitting to God, he will put forth every effort to prevent this wholesome course being adopted. In all these views you see occasion for the direction here given in connection with the injunction, “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” There were no occasion for resisting him if he did not step in, if he did not withstand measures of a wholesome and healing character. He will be very quiet, he will not trouble you much, if you live after the flesh, for he knows that if you live after the flesh ye shall die.
If you nurse this lust of the spirit of envy in yourselves, and help it on in others there will be no need of resisting the devil. Were he to oppose you in such a state of things, it would be a kingdom divided against itself, which cannot stand. But so soon as there is anything like a return of the spirit of true wisdom, genuine humility, mutual respect, forbearing and forgiving one another, and in all the ways in which it may shew itself, submitting yourselves to God, be assured if you succeed in the exercise, it will not be the devil’s fault; he will do what he can to hinder you. We may therefore regard it as a token for good if there be any trace of his policy in the midst of us, if those who would put on the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit find it very difficult to wear it, who in submitting themselves to God, and calling upon those around them to do the same, encounter fierce and formidable opposition, we may regard it as a token for good. Some are very apt to be cast down, and in the spirit of the aged Patriarch to say, “All these things are against us”; or in the language of the Psalmist, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, then would I flee away and be at rest”; or in the spirit of dejection as Jeremiah, “Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men that I may leave my people and go from them, for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men” (Jeremiah ix. 2). But, my friends, the very troubles that lead to such repining, and tempt one to adopt such courses, ought rather to encourage you. It is not usual with the devil to mistake. It is not usual with him to oppose what is favourable to his interests. If therefore, we find him troubling, if we find that there is a clear call to resist him, we may conclude there is something, however small, worth his attempting to destroy: and if you resist the devil, it is added: “He will flee from you.”
There is no real courage but in truth and righteousness. So long as we in our first parents retained these qualities we were strangers to fear, walking in the garden at any time it was meet without any apprehension of danger. But no sooner were these qualities lost in the apostacy from God than our nature was stripped of all real courage. And doubtless the guilty pair trembled at the rustling of a leaf; and especially that which before had been an object of delight to them became a source of terror; and perhaps they who would have walked fearlessly even in their guilty state under the roaring of a lion, so soon as they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the midst of the garden, they ran and hid themselves. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” It is the righteous only that are bold as a lion. It is therefore according to the nature of things that this fallen spirit of darkness robbed of all his primitive beauty and glory and dignity, and sunk into the most abject state of darkness and depravity should be a coward at heart. Resistance frightens him. Why should it? He knows that resistance can come only from one quarter, and it is that quarter he peculiarly dreads. We see the venom of the old serpent working in our nature in our first parents trembling at the voice of the Lord God. The old serpent himself trembles at the voice of the Lord God. See what took place in the presence of the Eternal Word, God manifest in the flesh. “Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” Yea, and look at the way in which his cowardice was shewn under the Ministry of Christ’s Apostles. Jesus we know, and Paul we know. We know them to our cost.
Now it is said “He giveth more grace,” for it is written, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.” It is to the humble, those who submit themselves to God, who in doing so in the Gospel, by virtue of the death of Christ, have an effectual cure applied to the spirit that lusteth to envy. God is for them. The devil knows this by their resisting him, and smelling the divine presence he flees.
Verse 8th: “Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.”
We removed ourselves far from Him when we rebelled. Where there is alienation of a creature from the Creator, there is the indication of the creatures rebelling against the Creator; and when there is alienation from the people of God, there is evidence that there is rebellion against His truth, and His authority and His name that appears in them; and where there is alienation in the soul from the principle of grace in its varied modes and actings and outgoings, there is dark and deadly work going on in the soul against God. We may regard it as a self-evident truth, take it and keep it as such, that estrangement is an infallible indication of rebellion.
All friendship begins with, and is founded on submission. Submission is the opposite of alienation. Submission is the opposite of rebellion. If therefore, there is to be friendship with God there must be submission to Him; and there must be submission to God sitting on the Throne. It is there, even in Christ His Mercy-seat, He demands submission on the part of sinners in a penitent way. It is there that He waits to receive submission. Therefore will the Lord be exalted, that He may shew mercy. He waits that He may be gracious, and it is there that He accepts the submission that is tendered to Him by those who, through the power of the Holy Ghost, are humble, broken-hearted, contrite. “To this man will I look, saith the High and Holy One that inhabiteth Eternity.” What is that? You may say that in one view, the Eternity He inhabits is the person of Christ. “To this Man will I look, saith the High and lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity.” (In this view) to him that is poor and of a contrite Spirit, and that trembleth at my word” (Isaiah lxvi. 2).
And where there is to be friendship with the Church of God, there must be submission. And where there is to be friendship with one another there must be submission. Oh, some will say, what kind of doctrine is that? It is pure solid scriptural doctrine. Hear ye the word of the Lord. “Likewise ye younger submit yourselves to the elder, yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility” (I Peter v. 5). Oh, my friends, what a different state of things would obtain in our day, and what different state of things would obtain among us, if there were even a little of such a spirit granted unto us! Men are jealous—of what? Of their honour, their independence, their liberty. “Use not liberty for a cloak of maliciousness.”
Take care that this jealousy be not the spirit that lusteth to envy, not the spirit that the Scripture inculcates. Where there is submission on the part of the creature to the Creator, the ground is laid for a mutual drawing nigh of those who stand in this peculiar relation. “Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you.” You may try it if you will; you will find it impossible to draw nigh to God where there is not submission. You may put on the appearance of drawing nigh to Him, but there will be nothing more than the appearance. You may draw nigh to Him with your lips, but your heart will go after its covetousness. This is the law of His house in the past, the law of His house in the present: the law of His house in all time to come, and throughout eternity. It befits His infinite Majesty to exact submission to Him. He is glorious in His own eyes because He is inexorable in His exactions; He will be glorious in your eyes if you see Him because He will not dispense with it. You will be mean and vile if you withhold this submission. You will know no peace till through grace you are brought to it—”There is no peace, saith My God,” that is the God who hath all peace under His control, “there is no peace to the wicked.” Who are the wicked? Non-submitters to God.
The quarrel being settled in this submission at the hands of sinners in Christ, and it is in Christ that submission must be rendered; it must pass through the hands of the Mediator, He is the disposer of the Father’s claims to such submission, and He presents His people’s submission to the Father in accordance with these claims, the quarrel being thus amicably settled in the Mediator, there they who submit themselves to Him have liberty of access into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, He turns to them a “pure language that they may all call upon the name of the Lord and serve Him with one consent” (Zeph. iii. 9). They have freedom to pour out their hearts before Him, they can tell all their mind to Him. It seems as if they only needed to open the sluice, and the stream of complaints, desire, lamentation, acknowledgment, thanksgiving, flow freely and sometimes in a copious stream. At other times it seems as if these poor people could not draw nigh to Him, the sluice seems shut, and they conclude there is nothing to come forth because the well is dry. Again they are revived and quickened, and again the same exercise is reached they draw nigh to Him and He draws nigh to them. It is not a one-sided friendship, it were not worthy of the name of communion in that case. He opens His mind to them a little, it is but a little they can stand at the most. He tells them what He thinks of them, as they tell Him what they think of Him. He tells them what He means to do with them, as they tell Him what through grace, they mean to do in regard to Him.
(To be continued.)
Christians will weep whole nights for the want of sense; but few take that time to weep for the want of assurance.—Andrew Gray.