Jan 22
31
One everlasting memorial of anguish and suffering
(John MacDuff, 1818—1895)
Rev. 5:11 And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands;
Rev. 5:12 Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.
What an anthem is this! No harp is unstrung, no voice
silent. One strain thrills on every tongue—”Worthy is
the Lamb who was slain!” What an attestation to . . .
God’s immaculate holiness,
His burning purity,
His unimpeachable rectitude,
His boundless mercy!
In Heaven, there shall still be one everlasting memorial
of anguish and suffering—in a place where pain never
enters and suffering is unknown!
Accordingly, when the Redeemer puts the coronation anthem
into the lips of His worshipers, He reveals Himself, not in the
glories of Godhead—but as a slain Lamb, wearing the marks of
humiliation. He tells them to make Calvary still their meditation,
and His Cross and Passion the great centre of eternity. The print
of the nails in His hands, and the spear-mark in His side, are not
the mementos of shame but of victory—remembrancers of a love
whose depths the ages cannot fathom! The vision of the text thus
becomes the mightiest of preachers, replete to the multitudes
above, with the story of grace. There is a tongue in every wound
of the glorified Sufferer—silently but expressively proclaiming the
great love that He had for us!
As the slain Lamb, Jesus proclaims that the same heart which
throbbed in anguish on the Cross—still beats on the Throne;
that He is still the Almighty Friend. Precious assurance! Jesus
unchanged and unchangeable! This same Jesus, who mingled
His tears with the widow at the gate of Nain; who wept over
the memory of a cherished friendship, and was melted in a
flood of tenderest compassion over an apostate land; this
same Jesus, who breathed balm-words of comfort on the very
eve of His own agony, and in the midst of it welcomed a dying
felon to Paradise—is now, with a heart of unaltered love and
sympathy—wielding the scepter of universal empire!
That wonderful medicine!
(Letters of J. C. Philpot)
“Who forgiveth all thine iniquities and healeth all thy
diseases.” Psalm 103:3
What a mass of . . .
filth and folly,
blindness and ignorance,
deceit and hypocrisy,
carnality, sensuality, and devilism are we!
Prone to all that is bad, utterly averse to all
that is good—bent upon sin—hating holiness,
heavenly-mindedness, and spirituality—what
earthly wretches, guilty monsters, abominable
creature are we!
And if our minds are sometimes drawn upwards
in faith and affection, and we pant after the living
God—how soon, how almost instantly, do we drop
down again into our earthly self, whence we are
utterly unable to rise until the Blessed Spirit lifts
us out again! What fits of unbelief, shakings of
infidelity, fevers of lust, agues of carelessness,
consumptions of faith, hope, love and zeal; yes,
what a host of diseases dwell in our poor soul!
But they all admit of a twofold cure—that wonderful
medicine which John saw run from the wounded side
of the Redeemer—blood and water; the one to heal,
the other to wash; the one to atone, the other to
cleanse; justification by blood, and sanctification
by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the
Holy Spirit.
“The blood of Jesus, cleanses us from every sin.”
1 John 1:7
“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.” Romans 7:18
Octavius Winslow
The Lord will cause His people to know their total weakness and insufficiency to keep themselves, and that, too, not notionally, not theoretically, nor from what they hear, or from what they read, but from their own deep personal experience of the truth: yes, He is perpetually causing them to learn it. I do not allude merely to that blessed period when the Holy Spirit first lays His axe at the fabric of their self-righteousness- truly they first learn it then- but it is a truth they become growingly acquainted with; it is a lesson they are made daily to learn; and he becomes the most perfectly schooled in it, who watches most narrowly his own heart, is most observant of his own way, and deals most constantly and simply with the cross of Jesus. With regard to the way which the Lord adopts to bring them into the knowledge of it, it is various. Sometimes it is by bringing them into great straits and difficulties, hedging up their path with thorns, or paving it with flints. Sometimes it is in deep adversity after great prosperity, as in the case of Job, stripped of all, and laid in dust and ashes, in order to be brought to the conviction and the confession of deep and utter vileness. Sometimes it is in circumstances of absolute prosperity, when He gives the heart its desire, but sends leanness into the soul. Oh, how does this teach a godly man his own utter nothingness! Sometimes it is by permitting the messenger of Satan to buffet- sending and perpetuating some heavy, lingering, lacerating cross. Sometimes by the removal of some beloved prop, on which we too fondly and securely leaned- putting a worm at the root of our pleasant out-spreading gourd, drying up our refreshing spring, or leading us down deep into the valley of self-abasement and humiliation. But the great school in which we learn this painful yet needed and wholesome lesson, is in the body of sin which we daily bear about with us. It was here Paul learned his lesson, as the seventh chapter of his letter to the Church at Rome shows, and for which Epistle the saints of God will ever have reason to praise and adore the blessed and eternal Spirit. In this school and in this way did the great apostle of the Gentiles learn that the most holy, deeply taught, useful, privileged, and even inspired saint of God was in himself nothing but the most perfect weakness and sin. Do not be cast down, dear reader, if the Lord the Spirit is teaching you the same lesson in the same way; if He is now ploughing up the hidden evil, breaking up the fallow ground, discovering to you more of the evil principle of your heart, the iniquity of your fallen nature, and that, too, it may be, at a time of deep trial, of heavy, heart-breaking affliction. Ah! you are ready to exclaim, “All these things are against me. Am I a child of God ? Can I be a subject of grace, and at the same time be the subject of so much hidden evil, and of such deep, overwhelming trial? Is this the way He deals with His people?”
Yes, dear believer, you are not solitary nor alone; for along this path all the covenant people of God are traveling to their better and brighter home. Here they become acquainted with their own weakness, their perpetual liability to fall; here they renounce their former thoughts of self-power and of self-keeping; and here, too, they learn more of Jesus as their strength, their all-sufficient keeper, more of Him as their “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” Cheer up, then, for the Lord your God is leading you on by a safe and a right way to bring you to a city of rest.
The searching, burning, purifying fires of Christ’s furnace!
(Octavius Winslow, “Daily Need Divinely Supplied” 1870)
“He will sit as a Refiner and Purifier of silver — He shall purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver. ” Malachi 3:3
“I will refine them as silver is refined and purify them as gold is tried” Zechariah 13:9
O my soul, what deep need is there for this refining and purifying of your Lord . . .
what inward corruption,
what carnality,
what worldliness,
what self-seeking,
what creature idolatry,
what God dishonouring unbelief!
All these imperatively demand the searching, burning, purifying fires of Christ’s furnace!
My soul — your Refiner and Purifier is Jesus!
It is a consolatory thought that our refining is in the hands of Jesus — in the hands that were pierced for us on the cross!
Jesus shapes all your trials!
Jesus sends all your afflictions!
Jesus mixes all your sorrows!
Jesus shapes and balances all the clouds of your pilgrimage!
Jesus prepares and heats the furnace that refines you as silver and purifies you as gold!
Then, O my soul, tremble not . . .
at the knife that wounds you,
at the flame that scorches you,
at the cloud that shades you,
at the billows that surge above you.
Jesus is in it all — and you are as safe as though you had reached the blissful climate . . .
where the vine needs no pruning,
and where the ore needs no purifying,
where the sky is never darkened, and
upon whose golden sands where no storms of adversity ever blow, or waves of sorrow ever break.
Mark the Refiner’s position. “He will SIT as a refiner and purifier of silver.” It would be fatal to his purpose, if the human refiner were to leave his post while the liquid mass was seething in the cauldron. But there he patiently sits, watching and tempering the flame, and removing the refuse and the dross as it floats upon the surface of the molten ore.
Just so, Christ sits as a Refiner . . .
and with an eye that never slumbers,
and with a patience that never wearies,
and with a love that never chills,
and with a faithfulness that never falters,
He watches and controls the process that . . .
purifies our hearts,
burnishes our graces,
sanctifies our nature, and
impresses more vividly His own image of loveliness upon our soul.
If He places you in the fire, He will bring you through the fire, “that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”
But sweet and soothing is the truth that the believer is not alone in the fire! The Refiner is with us, as with the three Hebrew children passing through the king’s burning furnace.
The Lord will have us be polished stones. As some believers are more rusty and some more alloyed than others — they need a rougher file, and a hotter furnace!
This may account for the great severity of trial through which some of the Lord’s precious jewels are called to pass. Not less dear to His heart, are they for this refining.
Look up, my soul, to your Refiner!
The knife is in a Father’s hand!
The flame is under a Saviour’s control!
Be still, be humble, be submissive.
“Heed the rod — and the One who appointed it!” Micah 6:9
“I was silent; I would not open my mouth — for You are the one who has done this!” Psalm 39:9
One mass of moral corruption!
(Winslow, “The Inner Life in its Relapsed Influence”)
Where divine grace does not exist in the heart, there
is nothing to stunt the growth, or to check the progress,
or to restrain the power of the soul’s depravity.
The fountain pours out its streams of corruption and death,
bidding defiance to all human efforts either to purify or restrain.
Education can’t restrain the power of the soul’s depravity.
Public sentiment can’t restrain the power of the soul’s depravity.
Human law can’t restrain the power of the soul’s depravity.
Moral persuasion can’t restrain the power of the soul’s depravity.
‘Self love’ can’t restrain the power of the soul’s depravity.
All these instruments fail in the attempt.
There is going on in the soul a process of moral decay,
which, if not averted by divine grace, must terminate in
the intolerable and interminable pangs of the second
death; the soul departing into eternity, one mass of
moral corruption!
But let one grain of God’s grace fall into this corrupt
fountain, and there is deposited a counteracting and
transforming element, which at once commences a
healing, purifying, and saving process. And, what
parental restraint, and the long years of study,
and human law, had failed to do, one hour’s deep
repentance of sin, one believing glance at a crucified
Savior, one moment’s realization of the love of God,
have effectually accomplished.
O the intrinsic preciousness, the priceless value, the
sovereign efficacy of God’s converting, sanctifying grace!
Effecting a lodgement in the most debased and corrupt
heart, grace revolutionizes the whole soul, changing its
principles, purifying its affections, ennobling its sentiments,
and assimilating it to the Divine holiness.
All true sanctification
(Octavius Winslow)
“Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us
from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works.” Titus 2:14
There is no victory over the indwelling power of sin, and
there is no pardon for the guilt of sin, but as the soul deals
with the blood of Christ. The great end of our dear Lord’s
death was to destroy the works of the devil. Sin is the great
work of Satan. To overcome this, to break its power, subdue
its dominion, repair its ruins, and release from its condemnation,
the blessed Son of God suffered the ignominious death of the
cross. All that bitter agony which He endured, all that mental
suffering, the sorrow of His soul in the garden, the sufferings
of His body on the cross–all was for sin.
See, then, the close and beautiful connection between the death
of Christ–and the death of sin. All true sanctification comes
through the cross! Seek it there. The cross brought into your
soul by the eternal Spirit will be the death of your sins. Go to the
cross! Oh, go to the cross of Jesus! In simplicity of faith, go with
the strong corruption; go with the burden of guilt; go to the cross!
You will find nothing but love there, nothing but welcome there,
nothing but purity there. The precious blood of Jesus “cleanses us
from all sin.” And while you are kept low beneath the cross, your
enemy dares not approach you, sin shall not have dominion over
you, nor shall Satan, your accuser, condemn you!
One foot in hell
(Horatius Bonar, “The Three Crosses”)
“Verily, I say unto thee today shalt thou be with Me in paradise.”
Luke 23:43
The saved thief is a specimen of what the cross is appointed
to do. Sin abounding, grace super-abounding.
What is yon cross erected for? To save souls!
See, it saves one of the worst; one who had done
nothing but evil all his days!
What does that blood flow for? To wash away sin!
See, it washes one of the blackest!
What does yon Sufferer die for? To pardon the
guiltiest! Not merely to save from hell, but to open
Paradise to the chief of sinners—to open it at once;
not after years of torment, but “today.” Today “with
Me.” Yes, Jesus goes back to heaven with a saved
robber at His side! What an efficacy in the cross!
What grace, what glory, what cleansing, what healing,
what blessing—at yonder cross! Even “in weakness”
the Son of God can deliver—can pluck brands from
the burning—can defy and defeat the evil one! Such
is the meaning of the cross! Such is the interpretation
which God puts upon it, by saving that wretched thief.
See how near to hell a man may be—and yet be
saved! That thief, was he not on the very brink of the
burning lake—one foot in hell; almost set on fire by
hell? Yet he is plucked out! He has done nothing but
evil all his days—down to the very last hour of his life;
yet he is saved. He is just about to step into perdition,
when the hand of the Son of God seizes him and lifts
him to Paradise!
Ah, what grace is here!
What boundless love!
What power to save!
Who after this need despair?
Truly Jesus is mighty to save!
See how near a man may be to Christ—and
yet not be saved. The other thief is as near the
Savior as his fellow—yet he perishes. From the
very side of Christ—he goes down to hell. From
the very side of his saved fellow—he passes into
damnation. We see the one going up to heaven
—and the other going down to hell.
This is astonishing—and it is fearful!
Oh, what a lesson—what a sermon is here!