|
Love In Action
A
PREPARATION FOR CHRIST’S COMING
NOTES OF BIBLE TEACHING
GIVEN BY PASTOR O. STOCKMAYER, AT DOVER, APRIL, 1895.
____________________
IV
Habitations of God
“The grace of
God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us, to
the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should
live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world;
looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great
God and Savior Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us, that He might
redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a people for
His own possession, zealous of good works.” (Titus 2:11-14)
How often God’s own people have robbed Him and paralyzed His
working at the very moment in which He manifested Himself! They have
enjoyed His presence in a fleshly, soulish manner, and then He could
not continue to manifest His presence in the same way. By giving way
to emotion you corrupt the holy Word of God. Let me remind you,
brethren and sisters of the New Covenant, how Abraham, the man who
is the father of us all (Rom 4:2), understood worship. In that most
critical period of his life, when God said, “Give Me thine only son
Isaac, whom thou lovest, the son of promise,” he rose early in the
day, and went straightway to the mountain, and when he came to the
place (Gen. 17:5), he said to his young men, “Abide ye here with the
ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship.” Abraham obeyed
his God at any cost: that is worship. If the Lord meets with us
here, it is to teach us true worship in daily life.
Practical worship is to sacrifice our Isaacs, to sacrifice
everything, till the word “sacrifice” is merged, in the “free-will
offering” of all that we have, and all that we are. Let us not give
ourselves up to enjoyment, but let us use for Him these moments in
which we gather at the feet of Jesus, that we may have His presence.
There are watchmen upon the tower, silently waiting to see what He
will say to them (Hab2:1), and there are doorkeepers at the
threshold, to turn back the unclean (2 Kings 11:5-6). It depends
upon each one of us how far the Lord, who is ready and willing, will
be able to manifest His real presence with us, subjecting human
spirits and thoughts and imaginations, carrying them into captivity
to the cross, and to His own life, till our whole self-life is
brought into captivity to the Risen One.
“There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God. For
he that is entered into His rest hath himself also rested from his
works, as God did from His” (Heb. 4:9). Now God the Holy Ghost,
according to His good pleasure, works in us both to will and to do;
we have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, by giving
Him room to carry on His divine work in us. Let us no longer sigh
for His working, but say, according to the old creed of the
Christian Church, “I believe in the Holy Ghost.” As God keeps us
breathing, and keeps our blood circulating, without one moment’s
interruption, so God the Holy Ghost goes on working mysteriously in
the depths of our being without one moment’s interruption.
“Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest...Let us
draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may
receive mercy, and may find grace to help in time of need” (Heb.
4:9-16). We receive every moment the needed help, in proportion to
the extent and intensity of the need. “For the grace of God hath
appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us, to the
intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live
soberly and righteously and in this present world; looking for the
blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior
Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us” (Titus 2:11-14). This is the
whole Gospel— Christ for us and we for Christ. He gave Himself for
us ;—for what purpose? To take away our sins, pay our debts,
reconcile us to God, make propitiation for us—for what purpose? That
He might redeem us from all iniquity: “The Lord hath made to light
on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6, marg.). It is iniquity to
seek your own way, your own self-life. “And purify unto Himself a
people for His own possession, zealous of good works.” All that is
comprised in “righteousness.” A “sanctified” people is a people
for Christ, a people of whom He may dispose; none belonging any
more to himself. “Let My people go”—they are My people—“that
they may serve Me.” He has paid the price, and neither hell, nor
devil, nor sin, nor habits of the past can disprove His claim.
Then follows the redemption of the body. “Looking for that blessed
hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus
Christ.” Having given up the world, its habits and its money, its
reputation and comforts, we look for Him, not for enjoyable
experiences. That is the attitude of the sanctified soul, who
understands that from the moment he is redeemed by God he belongs to
Him. The tongue with which you speak, the ears with which you hear,
the eyes with which you see, all belong to Him. By the offering of
His body on the cross we are sanctified, and He has been made
sanctification unto us and for us. “Sanctification” is to live each
day unto Christ; and every member of Christ living in real,
practical sanctification, is brought into a deeper understanding of
the atonement. Crucified with Him through faith, our responsibility
is to live His life also through faith, worshipping Him. All that
which only God could do for us has been wrought out on
Calvary by God the Son, when in His human life, He became obedient
unto death. All that which only God can do in us, in our
inward or outward life, is being wrought out by God the Holy Ghost,
who produces and manifests in our lives what the Son has wrought out
for us. To let everything go out of our hands into God’s hands, is
to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
Now before going on to this last word of the Bible, the Coming of
Christ, let us stop a moment to consider “grace” as spoken of in
this central passage (Titus 2:11). How will you attain the
sanctification God expects if you are not, out and out, children of
grace, if grace is not the keynote of your daily life? If you are
not, through grace, manifesting Christ with every breath, then grace
itself is lacking in you. “The grace of God... hath appeared,” [is
shining, Gr.] in a dark place, bringing life through light.
What is grace? Grace raises up its standard on the ruins of human
work and human effort. “What the law could not do, in that it was
weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
that the ordinance, [requirement] of the law might be fulfilled in
us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit” (Rom.
8:3-4). God took in hand the very thing in which man had failed, and
in which the law also had failed because it met the ceaseless
opposition of the flesh. He sent His own Son to make room for the
Holy Ghost as His Agent that, on the ground of Christ’s atonement,
the Spirit might work in us and not fail. As God, when sending His
Son, centered upon Him the sins of all generations, so now He
centers in the Holy Spirit the direction of the life and being of
every child of God. God has gone to the lowest depth of the evil of
the world, which through the law He could never reach to the
uttermost. By the law we understand His holiness, His ways. Man was
accursed by the law, but, through the atonement of Jesus Christ, God
got to the bottom of the evil, and all his sin was nailed to the
cross; the cross of Christ shows every man to be accursed. If, in
the garden of Eden, the ground was cursed and man was not cursed, it
was because behind the first Adam stood the second Adam, and on the
ground of Christ’s sacrifice God could bless man.
Perhaps your character has some good qualities, perhaps it has not.
You may not commit the sins of the thief or the adulterer, you may
not have so violent a temper as others; but through the cross you
must see yourself under one common curse with all others, Jews or
heathen, just or unjust. Nothing in ourselves can claim to be
accepted, and to stand before God’s holiness. All in our human
character that has not been born again is accursed in God’s eyes.
This is grace—God taking the measure of man’s steps, not
constraining but overcoming us by His love. Thus He makes us His
most blessed slaves, finding our highest, most glorious liberty is
to be bound by God within the limits of His holiness. Such slaves
rejoice that they may not please themselves, even in their prayer
and emotion. They seek in all things not to justify themselves, but
to justify God the Holy Ghost, as having succeeded in His mission to
the uttermost. As Jesus Christ could say to His Father, “I have
finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do,” so the Holy Spirit
will one day be able to say: “I have finished the work which Thou
gavest Me to do.”
Beloved, when this grace of God appeared to you, did you see it in
all its fullness? Perhaps, little by little, that heavenly vision
has faded; you have confounded divine grace with your own
conceptions and efforts as if; the Divine could bear to mingle with
the human! You grieve the Holy Spirit of God, you corrupt and
paralyze His working in you to will and to do, when you introduce
into it your own life, your own doings and conceptions; and your
Christian life will be a caricature, a failure all along, until you
repent. You do not honor your God, you practically despise His grace
the moment you do not use it, when you substitute your own efforts
for divine grace, Oh, that one day grace may appear to you as God
sends it forth! Watch for the glorious moment of its appearing thus
on your horizon. Come back to the cross; let God rule. Perhaps after
long struggles and dreadful difficulties, crushed down under the
burden of your sins, the Holy Spirit may show you the cross of
Christ where man is condemned, and you may hear a voice saying,
“Return to Me, to your first love, and learn what you never yet have
fully learnt, to be children of grace.” Let us reverently leave in
God’s hands the most mysterious things of our life: He is able to
arrange and manage all.
As soon as we have come to the end of all our ability we have a
wonderful rest. God Himself rested on the seventh day from all His
works, and we also enter into the sabbath rest and peace of God.
“Having then a great High Priest who hath passed through the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For
we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of
our infirmities; but One that hath been in all points tempted like
as we are, yet without sin.” He sympathizes with us even to taking
our place, identifying Himself with us, for He has gone through all
Himself. “Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne
of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us
in time of need” (Heb. 4:14-16). What help? The sword of the Spirit.
We never enter into rest except through restlessness; the Word of
God stirs up and brings to the cross everything which is not of God,
which is not Christ in us.
“Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from
Thy presence” (Psa. 139:7)? For what purpose does the Spirit of God
thus pursue man so closely that he cannot fly from Him? The Spirit
of God claims His temple. In this same Psalm we read how wonderfully
the human body is constructed, and this master-work of God is to
become His habitation instead of the habitation of sin. Whither
shall I flee? He will reach me everywhere!” This human body is
priceless to Him; He must have it for Himself, that He may manifest
His glory in it. Cleansed by the Blood, the sword of the Spirit,
which is the Word of God, goes down to the very marrow of the human
organism, to “the thoughts and intents of the heart,” the very
sources of our being. Everything must be conquered; God’s rule must
be unlimited. Our bodies, after having so long served uncleanness
and self-life, now become God’s residence. That is real work. Let
the Holy Spirit do real work, that you may not be like the
Pharisees, clean without and corrupt within. Let Him have the
throne; He claims the dominion. There is no question of redemption
unless He has in us this full victory of the atonement of His Son.
|