One of the purposes for which we meet here from time to time is that we may stir each other up, both in memory and resolve, in relation to the things that constitute the hope of our calling. Paul exhorted Timothy to “stir up the gift of God that was in him.” If this was necessary with regard to a gift of the Spirit, how much more in relation to faith in our minds. It was one of the lamentations concerning Israel that “none stirred himself up to take hold on God.” This implies that something depends upon our effort in the matter. It is profitable to realise how much.

God has done much for us, but has left us much to do on behalf of ourselves. He has given us food, for example, but He only brings it so far. He has given corn the power of germination in the field, but leaves us to sow it, and after that, to grind it; and after that to decide in what form it shall be prepared for the table. He has given us the power to take in learning, but He has not invented an alphabet, nor given us books. The books have to be made; the alphabet has to be contrived; and after that we have to learn; and if we do not learn, we have to remain ignorant. He has given us the power of locomotion, but He does not move our limbs for us; He leaves it to us as to when and where to walk; when to rise up, and when to lie down. He has put it into our power to avail ourselves of various kinds of artificial locomotion; the horse, the donkey, the camel, the cart; and in these latter days, the steam engine, or electric machine, but He does not settle for us which we are to use.

So He has given us His word, which is “the power of God unto salvation;” but He has left it to human industry to bring it to us in an available form. In apostolic days it was in parchment rolls inscribed with quills or other instruments; in our day it is on paper printed with types. He does not supply the ink and paper, or invent the types, it has been all left to human industry. And so in the bringing of the Gospel to bear in individual cases; nothing is done by direct instrumentality; He supplies the elements of the situation and leaves them to be worked out by the faculties with which He has provided us. And so in the final effectuation of the truth; those who exercise them selves industriously in it are benefited by it, and conform to the state and image that God requires. Those who leave it alone, or are slothful, are the sufferers.

It is here where the function of individual industry and the office of exhortation come in profitably. We are enjoined to exhort one another daily; this is because of the native tendency to forgetfulness and inertness. The exhortation is a complex exercise, where it is of the true sort; it is not true or effective exhortation to merely implore people to be this or to do that; the secret of effective exhortation lies in bringing to bear on the mind those convictions and considerations that lead to the result desired. In its general form faith is the great power in this respect, but faith is not faith unless it have materials to act on. There is no lack of materials when we thus surround the table of the Lord in a state of enlightened contemplation.

Many are the facts that find their centre here. We have but to call them to mind, and keep them in mind, to be exercised in a way that is profitable for all. Sometimes one phase, sometimes another, presents itself; in this case, while looking for his coming, we remember that it is styled “the time of the dead.” We know it is called so because the dead at that time come to life again, to face the issues of the life they have lived in the flesh. As a rule, there is nothing but the terror of superstition associated in the popular mind with such a prospect; but there is no room for this frame of mind in anyone enlightened by the truth. The coming of Christ will be no more than the removal of a loved and loving friend from one part of the universe to another, on a greater scale, but the same in kind. It is like a friend in a distant country, coming to revisit us after a long absence. There is, of course, the difference connected with his function, for our fate is in his hands, and he comes to disclose it.

We must appear before his judgment seat. In this there is an element of terror to those who are obnoxious to that judgment seat; but who are they? The disobedient and the unforgiven. The friends of Christ are not disobedient; it is their obedience that constitutes them his friends. Their life, as a whole, is a life of obedience. There may be slips, and faults, and frailties, and shortcomings, but for these there is forgiveness, where there is love. This is one of the elements of the Gospel, that if any man in submission to the Gospel sin thus, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity. The obedient friends of Christ do not feel that these frailties stand between them and the friendship of Christ. The frailties belong to the weak flesh of which they are at present constituted. They themselves remember what is written, that-

“He knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust.”

Also,

That is, in the selection of sons for everlasting life, God proceeds upon the principle of forgiveness, that they may be humbled in the sense of benefaction conferred and He exalted, in the exercise of merciful prerogative.

Sins of frailty are, of course, in a very different category from that wilful sinning of which Paul speaks in the Hebrews, for which he says there remains no more sacrifice for sins. The difference between the two is well illustrated in the difference between the two apostles, Peter and Judas; Peter grievously sinned in denying the lord three times in his very presence, but he was forgiven, because Christ prayed for him; and Christ prayed for him because he knew that the denial was the result of weakness conquered by severe pressure, and was wholly foreign to the bent of Peter’s affection, and instantly repudiated and washed out by him in a flood of bitter tears. In the case of Judas there was a very different state of mind. He deliberately sold the lord to his enemies, for the sake of putting money in his pocket. For this, Judas instinctively knew there could be no forgiveness, and therefore he went and hanged himself. Possibly, too, he remembered the Lord’s words,

But such considerations cannot come into the circle of our thought as the ordained friends and hearty, if stumbling, servants of the Lord in his absence, marching through the desert in the teeth of blinding sleet, chilled to the bone with the universal cold, and descrying through the storm, in the far distance, the shimmering lights of home. We look up through our tears to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help, in this, the time of our need.

But for the enemies of Christ the coming of Christ is something more than an undesirable event. Though we are not his enemies, but suppliants for his favour, it will help us to stir ourselves up in the manner that is reasonable, if we realise what the judgment seat will be for them. Paul uses the word “terror” in connection with it;

“Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord,” he says, “we persuade men.”

This is not too strong a term in view of the adjuncts of that great day. Paul speaks of it as a day of wrath. Of “them that are contentious and do not obey the truth,” he says that they will find it a day of indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish. Christ’s own picture of it shows us a crowd departing from his presence with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. As a whole, it is constantly spoken of as a day of vengeance, and the figures constantly spoken of as a day of vengeance, and the figures of the vengeance are strong:

“In flaming fire taking vengeance.”

This vengeance is world-wide in its sweep; it begins at the hose of God, as Peter says, and if they are to suffer, “what,” says he, “will be the end of those who obey not the gospel of God?” (1 Pet. 4:17). The world at large will feel the strong hand of His retribution; there will be a time of trouble such as never was; which is in general figure presented to us as-

And of that day it is said,

Israel have had a day of this kind already in their experience, and we are enabled to have a sense of the almost unutterableness of its terrors from the full and graphic account, which in the providence of God has been preserved by one who came through it. It is the turn of the Gentiles next. The judgments of God are impending for this generation as they were for the generation that witnessed the crucifixion of Christ. There will be this difference as compared with the day of judgment on Israel; the Lord will be in the earth, to bring the power of heaven to bear directly, through the multitude of the angels who accompany him. Even apart from the views opened out by this consideration, we can see how easily, humanly speaking, nations will be brought into tribulation when the moment arrives for the translation from the present evil state of things to the glory of the Kingdom of God. The translation we know is effected by war, for it is revealed; and war on scale commensurate with the object to be attained, and with the over-powering success essential to the overthrow of all the kingdoms of the world. Such a war of itself must entail conditions of suffering that are not operative at present, nor when ordinary wars are in vogue. The conditions of society at present are highly artificial, and cannot bear disturbance without entailing a vast amount of suffering. When you are dealing with an agricultural population, who get their sustenance from the fields they till, it is not so easy to bring about a disturbance that will affect everyone; but in countries that depend upon trade, and whose higher classes live upon dividends coming regularly to hand, which depend in their turn upon confidence and commercial prosperity, it is easy to see that when an established system of credit and commercial intercourse is shattered by the irresistible onslaughts of a new power, that trade will be arrested and income destroyed, to both the dismay and the impoverishment of millions.

The prospect would be very depressing did we not know that out of all the trouble would come a day of righteousness and peace and healing; when the world has been adequately punished for its neglect of God, and its criminal enormities. The storm of vengeance will be stayed, and the nations humbled. They will gladly accept the new yoke, and come to learn the new ways that will be promulgated from Zion. Public life and private life will then be sweet and joyful, and human intercourse in every way a thing of gladsome satisfaction. It is not the sentimental kind of promise that some people think it, where it is written,

And it is no unnatural thing for God to call upon us to rejoice with Him in the prospect:

This is the ground of our confidence and hope; who shall say it is a vain one? Hath God promised this great change? The Bible will have to be got rid of before any doubt can be thrown upon the answer. The Bible cannot be got rid of, its intrinsic character is its own witness, and the fulfilled prophecy of all history is the inexpungable pledge of what remains.

Let nothing interfere with our confidence here; the night may be dark, and the time may be long, but it is only so to human weakness; the purpose of God stands sure, and every tick of the clock brings on the appointed day. Let us hold fast the beginning of our confidence: let us resist the temptation to be weary in well-doing. Remember that nothing can be accomplished by giving in, and everything is to be accomplished by holding out. If we turn aside from the narrow way for the sake of the relief or gratification to be experienced in exchanging the yoke of Christ for the lawlessness of the flesh, we do not better our position except as regards the passing feeling of the hour. We cannot alter the evil state in which we live, we cannot arrest the decay of nature; we cannot emancipate ourselves from this inefficient, flagging mortal body by any insane attempt at release we may choose to make. The years drop by, and we are bound presently to find ourselves at the end of all mortal vigour, and in a grip of the implacable law which sends all men to the grave. How fearful to contemplate in such a case that the grave is but as the swing-gate into Christ’s presence. Men may look to it as a haven of refuge; this is the aberration of darkness. The “terror of the Lord” awaits the man thus escaping, as he thinks, as certainly as in our orthodox days we imagined hell to await the sinner when the breath went out of his body; for in the grave there is not a momentary conscious interval to the resurrection for those who enter it.

Look at the other side, holding on and enduring to the end, in the face of all difficulty and suffering. Even now there is a satisfaction in the service of God that no mortal man can taste who turns his face away. Godliness is profitable even in the midst of trouble; for neither tribulation, distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword, neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, can separate us from the love of God. Even while we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we can say,

This very resignation mitigates the keenest sufferings. We can always say with Christ,

And there is the constant certainty that it is but for a moment; it cannot in the nature of things last. In a year or two at the utmost it will be all over, and then think of the glory we are gaining-to find the Lord here, and the day of salvation come. It must be manifest that there is no course of wisdom but the one prescribed by the Spirit of God in all the Scriptures; and that is, to be steadfast in the way of righteousness, and immovable in the faith of God’s promises, and unswerving in our conformity to His commandments. Let this be our course unto the end.

Taken from: - “More Seasons of Comfort” No. 215

Pages 617-622

By Bro. Robert Roberts

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