(Matt. 25)
THERE is that (to a heart occupied with the plans of the Father based on the character of His love and grace in the gospel) which makes the coming of the Lord Jesus very sweet to the thoughts. In the world all is uncertainty, change, and death in everything, and as we advance onwards we find it more and more so. “All flesh is as grass,” we have nothing to lean on but the Word of God, nothing but the company of Christ to look for as we pass through this scene and find ourselves every day mere strangers and pilgrims where there is nothing to fill the aching void of the heart that longs to see Jesus. We are strangers. If Jesus led a stranger-life below we ought not to expect more. How God’s character revealed in His Word refreshes us by the way, enabling us to rise up as on eagles’ wings to go on again and again, rejoicing in Him in the midst of all discouragements and trials from without.
Let us turn to Matthew 25. and consider the last of the two parables it contains, and afterward glance at the judgment seat of Christ at the end of it. In the history of the talents a principle is involved which it is important we should rightly apprehend. Oftentimes we set Moses to teach a class, and would put under law those who are brought into the liberty of the gospel. The grace given by God is the only antidote to evil, the only power of good. Only one principle for God’s children, and that is grace. They are ever dealt with according to the principles of the kingdom. We would oftentimes set rules and tie God down to certain ways suited to our own narrow hearts, but in proportion as we understand Him, we shall have our hearts and lives molded by grace, and not law. How in the Word we see the character of God revealed in grace!
Satan often ensnares us to think well of self, but we are to be stripped of everything connected with self; it is self that hinders God coming in, in a large measure. If the flesh is not judged God comes in, uses circumstances, family trials, losses, anything, that we may come into His presence with a full sense of our nothingness and make His grace everything. If you think of Christ bearing the cross, going to Gethsemane, crying out on the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” can you think well of self that cost Him all that agony? Will you think it hard to be made to know there is nothing good in self? There is nothing, and the oldest saint knows this the best. If I have made any progress it is finding out the flesh to be worse and worse. I can’t do today what I could yesterday. I can’t trust myself today. What makes the exhortation needful to be continually in prayer and watching thereunto? Nothing but my necessity! It seems when a soul is about to escape from Satan’s snare it only makes him more active than ever. Our life is a conflict, a warfare, no sooner out of one trouble than we have to prepare for another.
Rest! are we to be expecting that down here? The life of a believer is one of perpetual conflict; perpetual fighting against the world, the flesh, and the devil, we cannot lay down our arms until the end. Sometimes we think it hard to go on so continually engaged, and say, Would that we had wings, then would we flee away and be at rest. The children of Israel did not like wilderness trials either, their hearts continually longed after the house of bondage, because of the leeks and onions and the fleshpots. Is it not often so with you and me?
Our blessed God in bringing us to heaven has great joy and gladness. We forget this, we are tried and get weary of the way He is leading us, we get tired of the people we meet on the way, tired of our sorrows; we say, I don’t feel as if I shall ever be happy here, but God is the same God. Is He not always happy in your joy, and ought not you to be happy in His? Contemplate God’s joy over us, saying, “All My love you have found out in time, but I have loved you from all eternity.” Think of God’s eternal love, is it not better to go to Him to be filled out of the fountain of His love, than to the broken cisterns of our temporal love? I know I do not love Him as I ought, no, nor ever can, but is it not better to be filled with God’s eternal love to me than with mine to Him? What a thought! Before time began God had you in His thoughts and all your circumstances in His heart.
All act according to their estimate of Christ. In this parable is one who has but one talent, and this man estimates God according to his own nature. Men say they dare not work for God with but one talent. Is a child ever afraid of the affectionate mother who rejoices to urge on her child’s faltering steps? Won’t the child try and do its best? Do our best for God! To be sure we shall, when He has made us His sons and daughters. If we have but one talent we ought only to work the harder for Him. If you say you have no ability, take care where you put yourself, it is on the ground of nature you put yourself then. Oh! may the blessed Spirit make you sorry with godly sorrow that worketh repentance, &c. Often I have been in such sorrow I have wept my heart out, and then I have been made so glad I have wept my heart out again for joy. Oh, it is a heaven of gladness, a heaven of heavens to be glad you were made sorry! Oh, go to God to be made sorry, to know the luxury of being made glad again by Him!
Well, this man had one talent, and he did nothing for his Lord but to bury his talent. Why, said his Lord, did you not, &c.? After all what can we give Him that we have not first received from Him? Oh, the grace of that God who will receive our poor service. Think of creatures on earth who know they have sinned and yet can, by the power of the precious blood, dwell in the very presence of God. We want not man’s rituals and formality of religion, there is something we do want, and it is a wonderful thing, and that is to be able (in virtue of the precious blood) to come into God’s presence and confess our sins, and He faithful and just to forgive us. Do we want man’s help for that? or what man calls the house of God? Can we expect that the heart that has never been broken by looking up will be so by looking down? God created us anew to have Christ as our great object in life. All good was in Him before it proceeded from Him. If His grace had not come down into our hearts, not a hope of salvation! Nothing for a sinner save His Christ! O blessed grace that came in when we had given all up as lost! Oh, the grace in the eye that looked on Peter, and he went out and wept out his heart!
Soon shall the place of him preaching to you know him no more, nor that of the company gathered before him. Soon all will have passed away not listening to me then, but remember all you who have heard it, this is the very word that when we have ceased to be, shall either condemn or be salvation to us.
J. WILLANS.