Gems from August 1- 10, 2016

"When Pharaoh drew nigh, the childen of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the LORD."  (Exodus 14:10)

Wouldn’t you be?  After all they were trapped.  All of them.

The Egyptians-looking for vengeance, were behind them-the entire army!

And the Israelites had no forces to protect themselves or oppose the enemy.

They had nowhere to go!

And yet the Lord had described the situation exactly to Moses beforehand (vv. 2-4).

with the explanation that He intended to demonstrate His invincible power.

So they, as we today, had nothing to do but to

 “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord” (v. 13).  

(G.W. Seale)

As we travel through life’s shadowed valley, fresh springs of His love ever rise,

And we learn that our sorrow and losses are blessings just sent in disguise.

(—Anon)

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August 1

SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR

"Thou art not far from the kingdom of God" (Mark 12:34).

If people are not sure whether they are Christians or not,
then I take leave to suggest that they are not. 

The Christian, according to the New Testament,
is someone who can say something like this: 

"I was--I am.” 

That is how the apostle described the Corinthians, was it not--He said, 

"And such were some of you!” 

They had been drunkards, adulterers, fornicators, etc. "But," he says, 

"you are not like that now—But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, 

but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, 

and by the Spirit of our God' (1 Corinthians 6:11). 

The apostle Peter used exactly the same terminology: 

"Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: 

which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy" (1 Peter 2:10).

 That is it!

(Martyn Lloyd-Jones - Walking with God) 

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August 2

RESCUE THE PERISHING

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives.”  (Isaiah 61:1)

Fanny J. Crosby, often called the “queen of gospel music,“ recalled how she wrote this challenging hymn:

I remember writing that hymn in the year 1869.  Like many of my hymns, it was written following a personal experience at the New York City Bowery Mission.  I usually tried to get to the mission at least one night a week to talk to “my boys.” I was addressing a large company of working men one hot summer evening, when the thought kept forcing itself on my mind that some mother's boy must be rescued that night or he might be eternally lost.  So I made a pressing plea that if there was a boy present who had wandered from his mother’s home and teaching, he should come to me at the end of the service. A young man of 18 came forward - “Did you mean me, Miss Crosby?  I promised my mother to meet her in heaven, but as I am now living, that will be impossible.”

We prayed for him and suddenly he arose with a new light in his eyes - “Now I am ready to meet my mother in heaven, for I have found God.”

Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch them in pity from sin and the grave;

weep o’er the erring one, lift up the fallen, tell them of Jesus, the mighty to save. 

Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, feelings lie buried that grace can restore;

touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness, cords that are broken will vibrate once more.

Rescue the perishing, duty demands it - strength for thy labour the Lord will provide;

back to the narrow way patiently win them, tell the poor wand’rer a Saviour has died.

Chorus: Rescue the perishing, care for the dying; Jesus is merciful, Jesus will save. 

(Fanny J. Crosby)

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August 3

“Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?  

If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell (in the depths), behold Thou art there.If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost  parts of the sea; Even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.  If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.  Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee.” 

(Psalm 139:7-12)

We cannot shake off the presence of God! When our doors are shut, and curtains drawn, and all is still, and darkest night fills our chamber, and we are left alone to the companionship of our thoughts--it might keep them pure and holy to say, as if we saw two shining eyes looking on us out of the darkness. “Thou God, seest me!” (Genesis 16:13)

The world called that man mad, who imagined that he saw God's eye looking on him . . . out of every star of the sky, and every flower of the earth, and every leaf of the forest, from the ground which He trod upon, from the walls of his lonely chamber, and out of the gloomy depths of night! 

Mad! It was a blessed and holy imagination!

May God help you to feel yourselves at all times in His presence!

(Thomas Guthrie 1803-1873)

“Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and open

unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” 

(Hebrews 4:13)

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August 4

"Herod . . . proceeded further to take Peter also . . . and when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him.”

(Acts 12:3-4)

Herod judged that he had made a grand step when he took Peter, and he 

put four quaternions of soldiers beside him—sixteen soldiers—to guard one solitary

man!  Peter had escaped from prison once before, and no one knew how he got out (Acts 5).

   

But Peter knew the Lord could take him out again, if He so willed.  It is a grand thing to know God, and an awful thing not to know Him.  Peter knew God, and slept peacefully, while Herod, recollecting what had taken place in days gone by, put these sixteen soldiers to guard him, four at a time, by watches.  

Of these two were chained to him, one stationed at the door of his dungeon, and one a little farther off, at the prison door outside.  Herod’s excessive precautions were evidently designed to make a second escape impossible to Peter.  But Herod was leaving God out of his reckoning. What availed all his bolts, bars, sentinels, and “two chains” upon his prisoner, if God stepped in?  - We shall see.

“Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him (v. 5).  To turn to Herod they knew was in vain, to turn to God was their only resource in this critical moment. God has ever been the help of His people.   The case seemed very hopeless.

The assembly besought God for Peter  “without ceasing” (v. 5).

"But there’s a power which man can wield, when mortal aid is vain; 

God’s eye, God’s arm, God’s love to reach, God’s list’ning ear to gain.

That power is prayer, which soars on high, through Jesus, to the throne,

And moves the hand, which moves the world, to bring deliv’rance down.”

“Many were gathered together praying . . . Peter knocked at the door of the gate

. . . when they had opened the door  and saw [Peter] they were astonished” (Acts 12:12-16).

(W.T.P Wolston)

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August 5

“The King hath brought me into His chambers; we will be glad and rejoice in Thee; we will remember Thy love more than wine; the upright love Thee.” (Song of Solomon 1:4)

We have the result, the happy fruit, of the drawing and the running.

The prayer expressed conscious weakness, and dependence, combined with holy diligence.

They have run well and reached the goal; and now they are crowned with joy and gladness.

But, never forget, it is grace that draws, and grace that runs, and grace that crowns, 

and that all flows from the shoreless ocean of the Saviour’s love.

“We will remember Thy love more than wine.”  

Now she uses the word “remember,” she knew His love before.

But she is enjoying it with increased interest.

Like air she is surrounded with it, 

she is in it.

“The King hath brought me into His chamber.”  

(Song of Solomon - Andrew Miller)

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August 6

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3)

The little word “all” tells us of the fulness of our blessings.

Not a single blessing that Christ, as a man, enjoyed has been kept back.

We are blessed with “all” spiritual blessings.

However much the profession of Christianity may confer outward benefits upon men,

it ever remains true that Christian blessings are spiritual and not material, as with the nation of Israel.

Our blessings are none the less real because they have a spiritual character.

Sonship, acceptance, forgiveness—some of the blessings brought before us in this Scripture—

are  spiritual blessings beyond the reach of this world’s wealth,

but secured through Christ to the simplest believer in Him.

Further, the proper sphere of our blessings is not earth but heaven.

We are blessed “in heavenly places.”  

On earth we may have little; in heaven we are richly blessed.

Unlike earthly blessings they do not depend upon health, 

or riches, or position, or education, or nationality.

They are outside the whole range of things earthly, and will remain in all their 

fulness when the life in time is finished and our path on earth is closed.

(Ephesians - Hamilton Smith)

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August 7

“Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom 

my soul is well pleased (has found its delight - JND).”

(Matthew 12:18)

Every one found room in the inn save He, but any who wanted to find Him 

whom angels celebrate must go to the manger.  

 It is the written word Jesus ever uses, and Satan is powerless.

“It is written” (Luke 4:4).

What amazing importance Jesus gives the scriptures. 

It was not as an act of divine authority He dismissed Satan, but 

the enemy is proved unable to grapple with obedience to the word of God. 

Jesus does not reason with Satan.

A single text silences when used in the power of the Spirit.

The whole secret of strength in conflict is using the word of God in the right way.

(Footprints  for Pilgrims - J.N. Darby)

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August 8

“So Jonah was exceeding glad because of the gourd.”

(Jonah 4:6)

Not only was he “glad,” but he was “exceeding glad” because of the gourd, 

as he had been “exceedingly displeased” because of God’s mercy.

How we delight in those temporal mercies that add to our ease and comfort!

The luxuries of the present day are often to us what Jonah’s 

gourd was to him—the cause of exceeding gladness.

“But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, 

and it smote the gourd, that it withered.” (Jonah 4:7)

Whether a whale or a worm, the same word is used.  God prepared them both.

As we see those things which have added to our ease and pleasure, fade and die; 

we may do well to consider whether it is our own loving God who 

Himself has prepared the worm to make them pass away.

We may learn lessons in adversity, in scorching suns, in poverty and want,

that we never could have learned in prosperity and ease and luxury.

(Lessons From Jonah The Prophet - G.Christopher Willis)

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August 9

“That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”  (Ephesians 3:17-19)

"A little child was playing by the shore of the broad blue sea,

And oft he looked away across the waves, so wonderingly:

It was a new entrancing sight to him, that watery waste,

The tossing billows breaking on the sands with foam-wreaths graced;

And often in his distant inland home, with childish glee,

The boy would say to young and older friends: ‘I’ve seen the sea!’  

And so he had; the child made no mistake, his words were true;

But yet, how much of ocean’s vast expanse had met his view?

Only the waves that rippled on the shore; while far away

The broad Atlantic in its depth and strength beyond him lay.

And thus we say we know the love of Christ; and so we do;

’Tis no exaggeration or mistake, but sweetly true.

But ah! how much of that unfathomed love do we yet know?

Only the ripples on the shores of time, that nearer flow.

The mighty ocean of redeeming love rolls deep and wide,

Filling eternity, and heaven and earth, with its vast tide.

We know it by a sweet experience now; yet shall explore 

Its breadth and length, its depth and height of grace, for evermore.”

(Heaven’s Cure for Earth’s Care) 

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August 10