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Behold the superlative liberality of the Lord Jesus, for He hath given us His all. Although a tithe of His possessions would have made a universe of angels rich beyond all thought, yet was He not content until He had given us all that He had. It would have been surprising grace if He had allowed us to eat the crumbs of His bounty beneath the table of His mercy; but He will do nothing by halves, He makes us sit with Him and share the feast. Had He given us some small pension from His royal coffers, we should have had cause to love Him eternally; but no, He will have His bride as rich as Himself, and He will not have a glory or a grace in which she shall not share. He has not been content with less than making us joint-heirs with Himself, so that we might have equal possessions. He has emptied all His estate into the corers of the Church, and hath all things common with His redeemed. There is not one room in His house the key of which He will withhold from His people. He gives them full liberty to take all that He hath to be their own; He loves them to make free with His treasure and appropriate as much as they can possibly carry. The boundless fullness of His all-sufficiency is as free to the believer as the air he breathes. Christ hath put the flagon of His love and grace to the believer’s lip, and bidden him drink on for ever; for could he drain it, he is welcome to do so, and as he cannot exhaust it, he is bidden to drink abundantly, for it is all his own. What truer proof of fellowship can heaven or earth afford?
Believer can we find rest apart from the ark, Christ Jesus? Then be assured that our religion is vain. Are we satisfied with anything short of a conscious knowledge of our union and interest in Christ? Then woe unto us! If we profess to be a child of God, yet find full satisfaction in worldly pleasures and pursuits, our profession is false. If our soul can stretch herself at rest, and find the bed long enough, and the coverlet broad enough to cover her in the chambers of sin, then we are a hypocrite, and far enough from any right thoughts of Christ or perception of His preciousness. But if, on the other hand, we feel that if we could indulge in sin without punishment, yet it would be a punishment of itself; and that if we could have the whole world, and abide in it for ever, it would be quite enough misery not to be parted from it; for our God - your God- is what your soul craves after; then let us be of good courage, we art a children El Elyon – The Most high God. With all our sins and imperfections, we can take this to our comfort: if our soul has no rest in sin, we are not as the sinner is! If we are still crying after and craving after something better, Christ has not forgotten us, for we have not quite forgotten Him. The believer cannot do without his Lord; words are inadequate to express his thoughts of Him. We cannot live on the sands of the wilderness, we want the manna which drops from on high; our skin bottles of creature confidence cannot yield us a drop of moisture, but we drink of the rock which follows us, and that rock is Christ. When we feed on Him our soul can sing, “He hath satisfied our mouths with good things, so that our youth is renewed like the eagle’s,” but if we have Him not, our bursting wine vat and well-filled barn can give us no sort of satisfaction: rather, we must lament over them in the words of wisdom, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!: |
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