We must ever remember that communion with the Lord is at once our joy and our security, the life of all service, and the power of all knowledge.
Whatever knowledge we have that does not connect us in spirit with the Lord, is a vanity of the mind, even though it may evert have the form of the truth, and be fully orthodox, as it is termed.
How often do we gather sorrow and shame in the end of our doings and ways, when we might have reaped joy and assurance, because we did not walk in the Spirit, or in fellowship with the Lord, through the circumstances as we should have done?
This is frequently illustrated in Scripture. As, for instance, in the striking and varied histories of Lot and Abraham; the former walked in the light of his own eyes, and he reaped shame, and loss, and sore disappointment; the latter walked by faith, and was brought to power and high estate, and great favor with God; and yet they were both in the main righteous.
I have been just meditating on a scene in the Gospel of Mark which illustrates this, chap. 6:30. You will observe on the return of the disciples to their Master, wearied and somewhat faint in their labor, He in tender consideration for them draws them aside to take rest and refreshment; in this He acted in the Spirit, as ever entering into their necessities. You can find Him moved with pity towards the scattered and unpitied flock of Israel, and again regardless of Himself, he turns to minister to them, and began to teach them many things. Here also He was not pleasing Himself but others, to their good to edification (Rom. 15:22Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification. (Romans 15:2)). But here we find the disciples ceasing to sympathize with their Master. His heart was set on the urgent necessities of their spiritual wants, and He began to teach them. But towards evening the disciples seem to interrupt His work, and present to His attention their temporal wants, and would fain have them dismissed, that they might go into the villages and buy themselves victuals.
Now in this they were not walking in the Spirit, they were not of one mind in the circumstance with Him. However, He does not rebuke them there; the rebuke was to come afterward, as we shall see in the fruit of their ways. He, still as the minister of the need of poor necessitous man, sets Himself to meet the occasion, and He supplies the multitude with bread. When He had thus done, He sends His disciples off in the ship, while He remains behind with the people.
Now I believe that He resumes His teaching of them, for by the words, “He sent away the people,” I understand that He dismissed them in a solemn manner, giving them godly admonition, and testifying further of the Father to them. But you observe the disciples forfeited all title to take part with Him in this service, and therefore He previously constrained them to go away in the ship. They had forfeited this honor, inasmuch as they had not been one with Him in His compassion for the multitude, as I before observed; for you know we cannot suitably instruct others, or take part in ministering to their souls, till we feel for them.
We then find the blessed Jesus; having sent the multitude away, in the mountain at prayer. There you see Him still in spirit, fervently laboring in secret with God, walking in the light, in full fellowship with the Father.
The disciples meanwhile began to gather the bitter fruit of departing in spirit from the Lord; while He was in prayer, they were toiling in rowing against contrary winds. He, in the fullness of power, and as the Lord, who is mightier than the noise of many waters, who spreadeth out the heavens and walketh upon the waves of the sea, having finished His course of ministry and come down from the mountain, that had witnessed the fervency of His spirit, gathers glory, the reward of His ways; He appears treading on all that was the occasion of His people’s travail and trial, and they were amazed and confounded in the presence of His glory.
They did not understand it. They cried out and were troubled, and all this because the heart was hardened; had their hearts been tender, had they continued in full sympathy and communion with their Lord through the previous circumstances, they would now have stood in the presence of His glorious power, not abashed and confounded but in assurance and joy—and so with us.
Let us now, in this time of His absence, seek communion in spirit with Him, and then when He appears we shall not be ashamed before Him at His coming.
I do not speak of loss of the glory, as in this scene you find the disciples with their Lord safe over the storm and together on the other side of the lake. His blessed grace and power reserve the glory for us; but I speak of the presence of that glory not putting us to shame, as it surely must if we now walk in fellowship with that which is not of its own character. —M S.