by Octavius Winslow D.D.
“This God is our God for ever and ever: He will be our guide even unto death.” — Ps. 68: v14.
Strong language this! But not too strong for faith to employ. In some believing minds, of doubting, though not of doubtful faith, of fearful, yet not of despairing hearts, it may sound like a vain-glorious boast, and appear a claim almost too presumptuous for a sinful mortal to prefer. Nevertheless, it is truth, and, more or less profound, is the experience of every child of God, and may be the language without any exaggeration of the weakest believer that ever touched the fringe of the Saviour’s robe. We too much forget that what has been the spiritual attainment of the saints in a past dispensation, may be equally the experience of the saints in every succeeding one. If, amid the twilight shadows of the old economy, believers could embody their faith in language as strong as this, why should believers, dwelling amid the full blaze of the present dispensation, upon which the Son of Righteousness has risen in noon-tide splendour, speak in language more timid and doubtful? Saving Faith and its Divine Object have been the same in every dispensation and age of the Church. The faith of Adam, the first and greatest sinner of his race, which looked to the Promised Seed, ere yet the gates of Eden were closed upon him, is essentially and objectively “like precious faith,” with which the penitent thief washed himself in the crimson fountain flowing at his side. Thus we must be careful of supposing that there is any eminence in the divine life, to which other saints have attained, unattainable by us. That there is any sacred height in grace, holiness, and assurance which they have reached to which we may not ascend — or, that there is any knowledge of Christ, any conformity to His likeness, any intimate relations with Him experienced by others, which may not be our experience too. Thus, strong and bold as is the language of David, there lives not a child of God who may not adopt it as his own, and exclaim; “This God is our God for ever and ever: He will be our guide even unto death.” Let us consider some of the sacred ideas suggested by the remarkable expression — “THIS God.” It is evident that the inspired speaker refers to some especial attributes of God upon which he had been expatiating, which designate Him as the convenant and redeeming God of His people. “This God — this very God — this great and glorious God, is our God.” What, then, are some of these distinctive attributes which especially identify Jehovah as the “OUR God” of His people?
And in the first place, ‘This God’ of revelation is ‘our God.’
This God, who has made such a divine and wonderful revelation of Himself — His Being and mind, His will and heart — in His Word, is ‘our God.’ In other words, the God of the Bible is ours. All that that inspired and precious volume declares concerning Him, all the thoughts of His mind it reveals, all the love of His nature it makes known, all the teaching of His Spirit it conveys, all the precious promises, all the gracious invitations, and the glorious hopes, and solemn warnings and faithful admonitions it contains, are ours, because the God of the Bible is ours. Accept the Bible as your own. Read it as the letters of your Heavenly Father addressed personally to you. Let no sophistry shake your confidence in its divine inspiration. Beware of that false reasoning that teaches that God’s Word is in the Bible, but that the Bible is not God’s Word. The giant evil of the day is infidelity unblushingly assailing the truth, and impeaching the integrity of the Sacred Scriptures. Be vigilant and prayerful here. Lose your Bible, and you lose your all. If, then, the God of revelation is yours, the revelation of God is equally yours. All that this blessed volume contains belongs of a right to you. The Divine Redeemer, the glorious gospel, the free salvation, the precious promises, the gracious invitations, the rich consolations, the blissful hopes, the holy admonitions, all, all are ours, because the God who wrote the Bible, who gave the Bible, who has preserved the Bible, and who dwells in the Bible, is ‘OUR God.’ Lay the hand of your faith upon this Divine Charter of blessings, and exclaim, ‘It is mine, all, all is mine, because the God who inspired it is my God. In giving me Himself he gave me all that was His — and this is His most precious gift next to His beloved Son, whom it reveals. Let me believe it firmly, deal with it reverently, read it devoutly, and walk in its divine precepts holily, and do all in my power to give to all who may not possess, as I do, this heavenly chart, this divine compass, this unerring light in the soul’s solemn travel to eternity.’
“Holy Bible, book divine,
Precious treasure! thou art mine!
Mine to tell me whence I came;
Mine to teach me what I am;
“Mine to chide me when I rove;
Mine to share a Saviour’s love;
Mine art thou to guide my feet;
Mine to judge, condemn, acquit.
“Mine to comfort in distress,
If the Holy Spirit bless;
Mine to show by living faith
Man can triumph over death;
“Mine to tell of joys to come,
And the rebel sinner’s doom:
Oh, thou precious book divine,
Precious treasure! thou art mine!”
This Incarnate God is ‘our God.’
The great truth of the Bible is — “God manifest in the flesh” — the Incarnation of the Son of God. And the belief of this truth, an essential doctrine of salvation, is equally essential to our being saved. No soul can possibly have eternal life who disbelieves, and, disbelieving, rejects this great cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith. “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God” (1 John 4: v.2, 3, 15). From these words we infer that, apart from faith in the Divinity of Christ, and a believing and personal reliance upon His Atonement, no man living can be saved. But how assuring and comforting is the truth that this Incarnate God is ‘our’ God! This God who left the heavens and came down, not in the nature of angels but of men, who was “made flesh,” who was “made in the likeness of man,” and as Man was encompassed with our sinless infirmities, hungered and thirsted, wearied and sorrowed as we, lived a life of toil and poverty, was sustained by charity, was assailed by persecution, moved in comparative obscurity and solitude, and then died a felon’s death — this wondrous Being, this God in our veritable nature, this Incarnate God, this JESUS is our God. Claim your relation to, and your possession of, this God-man, my reader. He is bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. He is “very man of very man,” as He is “very God of very God.” You have not a human element that did not enter into His humanity. Nothing that was human — for sin is a Satanic and not a human element, an accident and not an original concomitant of our creation — was foreign to Him. It is, therefore, your privilege to claim Him as your Elder Brother, “in all things made like unto His brethren,” and in all your afflictions of mind, body, and estate, to repair to Him as a “brother born for adversity.” Oh, what a distinguished blessing from among our precious and endless catalogue of blessings this, the blessing of knowing that Jesus is ours! That all the fulness of the Godhead essentially dwelling in Him, and all the fulness of the manhood mediatorially His, belongs to us! That every perfection of His being, and every element of His nature, and every pulse of His life, and every fibre of His heart — His every thought and affection and feeling — is ours! “Behold the Lamb of God!” “Behold the man!” for this God, this very God-Man, this very Man-God, is ours! Christ loves you to recognise your personal interest in Him. He is honoured by your claim of free grace to all that He personally and officially is, He is glorified by your continuous coming to the “unsearchable riches” of His grace, wisdom, and love, and from their inexhaustible fulness making large and unlimited draughts. “All things are yours, for ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” Receive, then, this “Great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh,” which, in other words, is the great mystery of love, and prefer your personal claim to its untold wealth — exclaiming, “This incarnate God, this God who stooped to my nature, who girded Himself with my sinless weaknesses and infirmities, my sickness and sorrows, is my God; all the sinlessness of His nature, all the sympathy of His manhood, all the tenderness of His love, all the filial oneness of His relation as the Elder Brother, all is mine!“
This Redeeming God is our God.
The Redemption of man is the achievement of God. Not so evident is creation a divine work — the sun, the moon, and the stars which He has made evidencing ‘His eternal power and Godhead’ — as is the work of man’s salvation. Upon this, His last and greatest work, He has concentrated the boundless resources of Deity. Here His glory meets in its focal power and splendour. God spake the universe out of nothing, and formed man from the dust of the earth, but in the Redemption of man, He became incarnate in the person of His beloved Son, exhausting heaven of its richest treasure, and conferring that treasure upon man in the person of Jesus the Saviour, ‘His unspeakable gift.’ Behold your divine possession!
This Redeeming God is our God. This God who hath redeemed us at a cost so dear and precious to Himself, as the gift, the sufferings, and sacrifice of His only-begotten and beloved Son, who charged all our sins to Him, laid all our curse upon Him, exacting from Him, as our Surety and Substitute, the utmost penalty of our transgressions and hell-deserving — this God of redemption, this redeeming God is our God. If, then — and this is the logical deduction of faith — if the God of Redemption is our God, it follows that the Redemption of God is ours. This is our warrant to believe in Christ, and to trust in God, and to commit our souls to Jesus, and to accept unhesitatingly, unreservedly, His complete and free salvation; this God, who provided so suitable and so great a redemption, is our God: therefore, we are justified in casting ourselves upon the infinite merit, the atoning work, the sacrificial death of Jesus, yea, upon Jesus, our personal Saviour Himself, and believe and be saved. Trembling, fearful saint, oh, possess this your possession! If the God who redeemed you is yours, then avail yourself of all the precious blessings flowing from that great redemption — a present salvation, a full forgiveness of all sin, completeness in Christ, peace with God passing all understanding, and joy unspeakable and full of glory. With your personal unworthiness, with your countless sins, with your deep poverty, you have nothing to do. The only object that is now to engage your thoughts, and fix your eye, and inspire your hopes, is JESUS. If you were under a great pecuniary liability, and an opulent friend were to assume your responsibility, and cancel it to the utmost fraction, you would justly reason — “What need I more be troubled about this matter? Why yield to fear and despondency? I am released from responsibility, my obligation is cancelled, my debt is paid, and I am legally discharged from all liability, arrest, and judgment. I will emerge from the shadows of my imprisonment into the bright sunshine of heaven, and will walk at liberty, bearing with me my legal protection and my full discharge, none daring to make me afraid.” Apply this simple reasoning to the salvation of your soul, and see to what a blessed conclusion and happy peace it will conduct you. Christ bound Himself in the covenant of grace to be our Surety. He became responsible to the moral government of God His Father for all its claims upon His people. He said, in terms virtually in accordance with that engagement, “Upon Me let their sins meet; with Me let their curse rest; upon Me let their punishment and condemnation fall. All that my Church owes I will pay; all for which My Bride is responsible I will discharge; all that My saints have most righteously incurred I will freely and fully endure. Let these go their way.” Oh, wondrous love! Oh, matchless grace! Oh, self-sacrificing mercy! Wonder, O heavens! be astonished, O earth! With such an all sufficient Saviour, with such a full, finished, and free discharge from the guilt of sin, the condemnation of the law, and the arrest of justice, will you any longer pursue your heavenly journey — your soul bowed down to the ground, like a bulrush, — your harp of song silent upon the willow, your path bedewed with tears, and the desert vocal with nought but your sighs, groans, and complaints? Rise! He calleth thee. Jesus bids thee come and walk in the light and joy of His salvation. Uplift your head, take down your harp, retune and sweep its strings to the high praises of Immanuel, for your great debt is paid, and “there is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” With the Church of the Old Testament let the Church of the New sing, but with a louder and sweeter strain, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.”
Extracts from Thomas Brooks’ Works
REPENTANCE. As the flood drowned Noah’s friends and servants, so must the flood of repenting tears drown our sweetest and most profitable sins. Repentance is a grace and must have its daily operation as well as other graces. True repentance is a continued spring, where the waters of godly sorrow are always flowing. My sins are ever before me. Ps. 51: v.3. Repentance is a continued act of turning, a repentance never to be repented of. A penitent has always something within him to turn from. Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of death — Rom. 7: v.24.
BAD COMPANY. Men who love their names and credits in the world, will shun the society of vain persons; how much more then should men who love Christ and love their precious souls shun such society? Look as shelves and sands do endanger the seaman, and as weeds the corn, and bad humours the blood, so does the society of evil men endanger good men. Men that keep ill company are, like those who walk in the sun, tanned insensibly.
JACOB. Laban followed Jacob with one troop. Esau met him with another, both with hostile intentions; but Jacob’s ways pleasing the Lord, God by His mighty power so worked that Laban left him with a kiss and Esau met him with a kiss. He had an oath from the one, and tears from the other, and peace with both. If men make light of keeping up their peace with God, it is just for God to leave them to a spirit of pride, envy, passion, contention, division and confusion.
AFFLICTIONS. It is reported of Tiberius the emperor, that passing by a place where he saw a cross lying in the ground upon a marble stone, and causing the stone to be dug up he found a lot of treasure under the cross. So, many a precious saint found much spiritual and heavenly treasure under the crosses of affliction. Manasseh’s chain was more profitable to him than his crown. Luther could not understand some scriptures till he was in affliction. God’s house of correction is His school of instruction. All the stones that came about Stephen’s ears, did but knock him closer to Christ, the corner-stone. The waves did but lift Noah’s ark nearer to Heaven. Afflictions do lift up the soul, to more rich, clear, and full enjoyments of God.
THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND. If afflictions are so sanctified as to draw out the soul to love the Lord more, to fear Him more, and to wait on, and walk with the Lord more, then they are in love. They are the wounds of a Friend indeed. It is said of the lioness that she leaves her young whelps till they almost kill themselves with roaring and yelling, and at the last gasp relieves them, and by this means they become more courageous. So, if our afflictions do increase our courage, strengthen our patience, raise our faith, enflame our love, enliven our hopes, they are “the wounds of a Friend.”
THE PEN. Is an artificial tongue; it speaks as well to the absent friends as to those present. It speaks to them afar off as well as to those near; it speaks to thousands at once not only the present age but also to succeeding ages. The pen is a kind of image of Eternity, it will make a man live when he is dead Heb. 11: v.4. Though “the prophets do not live for ever” yet their labours may. Zech. 1: v.6. A man’s writings may preach when he cannot, when he may not, and when by reason of bodily distempers he dares not. Yea and that which is more, when he is not.
THE MEMORY. Men do not easily forget their own names nor their father’s house, their wives, their families, nor to eat their daily bread. Yet how easily do they forget that word of grace, that should be dearer to them than all. Most men’s memories especially in the great concernments of their souls are like a sieve or a riddle where the good corn and fine flour goes through, but the light chaff and course bran remain behind, or like a strainer where the sweet liquor is strained out, but the dregs left behind; or like a grating that lets the pure water run away, but if there be any straws, sticks, mud or filth, that it holds as it were with iron hands. Memories are very treacherous especially in good things. Few men’s memories are a holy ark, a heavenly storehouse or magazine for their souls.
ACTION. If one’s light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing one is, the more miserable will that man be in the day of recompense. Light and knowledge will be more tormenting than all the devils in Hell. When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of an orator, the second and the third, he answered Action. If any should ask what is the first, the second, the third part of a Christian, the answer is Action. He that has a good book in his hand, but not a lesson of it in his heart or life is like the ass that carries burdens and feeds on thistles. In Divine account a man knows no more than he does. Profession without practice will but make one twice told a child of darkness. He who practices what he reads and understands, God will help him to understand, what he understands not.
IGNORANCE. Suppose a geometrician were drawing lines and figures, and an ignorant fellow seeing him should laugh, would the artist leave off his employment because of his derision? Surely not, for he knows the laughter is the fruit of ignorance therefore he holds on though the silly fellow continues to laugh. Ignorant persons deride holiness and laugh at it, yet be not ashamed of holiness but hold on. They throw dirt in the face of holiness. Be wise to wipe that off, and pursue holiness.
Selections from Samuel Rutherford
The great Master Gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence, with His own hand, planted me here, where by His grace, in this part of His vineyard, I grow; and here I will abide till the great Master of the vineyard think fit to transplant me.
If your Lord call you to suffering, be not dismayed; there shall be a new allowance of the King for you when ye come to it. One of the softest pillows Christ has, is laid under His witnesses’ head, though often they must set down their bare feet among thorns.
God hath called you to Christ’s side, and the wind is now in Christ’s face in this land; and seeing ye are with Him, ye cannot expect the lee-side or the sunny side of the brae.
He delighteth to take up fallen bairns and to mend broken brows: binding up of wounds is His office.
Wants are my best riches, for I have these supplied by Christ.
I hope to over-hope and over-believe my troubles.
I think the sense of our wants, when withal we have a restlessness and a sort of spiritual impatience under them, and can make a din, because we want Him whom our soul loveth, is that which maketh an open door to Christ: and when we think we are going backward, because we feel deadness, we are going forward; for the more sense the more life, and no sense argueth no life.
There is no sweeter fellowship with Christ than to bring our wounds and sores to Him.
There is as much in our Lord’s pantry as will satisfy all His bairns, and as much wine in His cellar as will quench all their thirst. Hunger on; for there is meat in hunger for Christ: go never from Him, but fash (trouble) Him (who yet is pleased with the importunity of hungry souls) with a dishful of hungry desires, till He fill you; and if He delay yet come not ye away, albeit ye should fall a-swoon at His feet.
I find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell, is to live without temptations; if my waters should stand, they would rot. Faith is the better of the free air, and of the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity. The devil is but God’s master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.
Forsaking All
Extract from a sermon by the late Rev. Donald MacFarlane, Dingwall, on Mark 10: vs.28-30.
It is always the duty of those who would follow Christ to forsake sin, but it is sometimes the duty of those who would follow Him to forsake those things that are lawful for them to have. It is lawful enough for us to have a house to dwell in, and friends to associate with, such as brethren, sisters, mothers, wives, children, and lands; but when these come in competition with following Christ, we are bound to forsake them. In the history of the Church, there were times when the Lord’s people did this, while others did not. At the time of the Disruption in 1843, the evangelical ministers, to the number of over 400, left their manses and churches for Christ and the Gospel . . . In 1893 the same test was put on the Free Church that came out at the Disruption, and of all the ministers in the Free Church, it was only two who stood the test. There was a godly man in Strathspey, named William Grant, who predicted that there would be another Disruption in the Free Church. After speaking to the Question at Moy on the Friday of a communion, he asked leave to speak again, which was readily agreed to. He said that since he sat down it was revealed to him that this would be the last communion he would be at in the world, and that there was something on his mind, that he wished to tell them before he died, and that was that there would be another Disruption in the Free Church, and that of all the ministers in the Church only two would follow Christ and the Gospel, and that if he were alive he would be with them. When we made a stand in defence of the truth it was told to a man who had heard William Grant’s prediction, that the disruption which he predicted took place. The man said that if there were more than two ministers it could not be the disruption predicted by William Grant. He was told that there were only two ministers, and then he said he believed it was what William Grant spoke of. It was lawful enough for the two ministers to have churches and manses, but they left these for the sake of Christ and His Gospel. The ministers and the people who followed them parted not only with churches and manses, but also with friends and near relations with whom they were formerly associated. Families were divided, some following the truth, and others following error. This was foretold by our Saviour when He said: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law . . . He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” We were blamed for causing divisions in families — it was Christ’s work. He kept some to His truth and permitted others to forsake the truth. There was good reason for the disruption that took place in 1893. This was acknowledged by some who failed to stand in defence of the truth when the trial came. When errors were coming to a height in the Free Church, Dr Aird of Creich said that the cause of the Disruption in 1843 was small as compared with the cause we have now to separate for from the so-called Free Church. It was only one doctrine that was denied in 1843, but now all the fundamental doctrines of the Bible were either ignored or denied; but when the trial came, Dr Aird remained in the Church which he so strongly condemned.