Consider Jesus

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        Consider Jesus– In Bereavement

        "Jesus wept." –John 6:35

        With what baptism of suffering was not Jesus baptized? What cup of sorrow did not He drink? Well may He ask, "Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" "Yes, Lord," every believing saint may reply, "by Your grace I AM ABLE; for, while without You I can do nothing, with You strengthening me I can do all things." Jesus replies, "You shall, indeed, drink of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; for all My members shall be conformed to Me, their Head." "Dear Lord," responds the believing soul, "if affliction, temptation, and sorrow but mold me into Your image, and conform me to Your life, do with me as seems good in Your sight."

        There are few sorrows more bitter and more keenly felt, than the sorrow of bereavement. Jesus knew what this sorrow was; let us consider Him in this light.

        Are you bereaved? so was Jesus. When the wondrous words were written on which this meditation is founded, He was weeping at the grave of the friend He deeply, tenderly loved, and now as tenderly and deeply mourned. Baptized with your present baptism of woe, drinking your present cup of grief, He knows your sorrow, can fathom with His love its depths, soothe with His sympathy its anguish, and enter into all the intricate and delicate network of the loss and loneliness it entails. "Jesus wept."

        And still in compassionate sympathy He weeps with those who weep. How truly human was the heart, and Divine the arm, of Jesus. With the one He moistened the grave with tears, and with the other He unclosed its doors and set its captive free. Both these natures--the Divine and the human--encompass you in your present bereavement. You need both, and both you have. The exercise of His DIVINE POWER in resurrection He may reserve for the moment when "those who sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him; when the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first." But the outflow of His HUMAN SYMPATHY shall be now, tear mingling with tear, sigh responding to sigh, in this dark hour of your calamity.

        My soul! let your first, your great desire be--not that your wound may be stanched, or your grief soothed, but that your God may be glorified in the fires; that henceforth your smitten and grieved heart may enshrine and enthrone Jesus, as the object of its single homage, and as the sovereign of its supreme rule. Has your God written you a widow?--then will He be to you the widow's God. Has He made you an orphan?--in Him the fatherless finds mercy. Has He by this visitation of death broken a supporting staff, dried a spring of affection, severed a source of supply, put out the lights of life one by one?--fear not! you shall now lean upon His arm, repose upon His heart, live upon His resources, and walk in His light. Thus learning by sweet, though painful experience, that the Lord never removes one blessing but to replace it with a greater; never seals up one spring of happiness but to unseal a deeper one. Then, let your bereaved heart exclaim--"Whom have I in heaven but You, and who is there on earth that I desire besides You?" All are not gone! Your God may have removed one by one of earth's sweet treasures; but He will never take Himself from you. Death may rob you of all but Christ.

        "Launched on the tide of God's eternal love,
        His ark beneath you, and His light above,
        What can you fear? Be still, my soul, be still!
        Your God has never left you--never will."

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Consider Jesus– as Receiving Sinners

"This man receives sinners!" –Luke 15:2

Nothing gave greater offence to the scribes and Pharisees than the divine mission of Jesus to save sinners. No greater and more virulent accusation could they allege against Him, than that, He extended His compassionate regards to the vile and the wretched, admitting the most flagrant offenders to His mercy, and inviting the most notorious sinners to His fellowship. And yet this, His greatest reproach, was His highest honor. Pluck this jewel from His mediatorial crown, and it has lost its costliest gem. Extract this note from the "joyful sound," and you have hushed its sweetest melody. Remove this object of His mission from His coming, and you have reduced His incarnation, sufferings, and death to a gigantic waste.

Oh, with what glory does the fact that, "This man receives sinners," invest the Son of God! How should our hearts glow with gratitude, praise, and love! If the individual who makes two blades of grass to grow where only one grew before, is regarded as a public benefactor; if we deck the person of him who, at the risk of his own, saves the life of another, what shall we feel towards the Son of God who, in the plenitude of His compassion and love, bowed the heavens, and came down to save countless myriads of our race from the "bitter pains of eternal death"!

Yes, "He receives sinners." He receives them as sinners--lost, undone, self-destroyed sinners--sinners too vile and too helpless to save themselves--who, if He does not save them, never can be saved. He receives sinners of all conditions and of every hue, of every depth of guilt and character of crime. Oh, if there were a sinner out-sinning all sinners--every sin tainting, every crime attaching to him--an abandoned profligate, an unbelieving scorner, a reviling blasphemer, a red-handed murderer, a profane infidel, a daring atheist, a moral parricide whose transgressions have broken a mother's heart and bowed a father's gray hairs in sorrow to the grave--sins as scarlet and red as crimson--as a cloud for darkness, and as the sands on the sea shore for multitude--if, I say, there be such a one whom He would not save, and could not save, then would there be silence in heaven and exultation in hell at the announcement that Jesus Christ had ceased to save to the uttermost bounds of sin and guilt all who, in penitence and faith, came to God through Him.

It follows, then, that, receiving them just as they are, He receives them freely, apart from all fitness or worthiness, of their own. "By grace are you saved." "Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." What a joyful sound! Come, then, O my soul, to Jesus, without hesitation or delay.

"Just as I am I and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot;
To Him whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come."

Assured of the fact that you yourself have come to Jesus and are saved, be it your aim to bring others to Him, that they may be saved too. Oh, live and labor, if need be, suffer and die for Him, whose greatest glory is, that He receives and saves sinners, who has received and saved you!

"He receives sinners." Hear it, you that are afar off, wandering in ignorance and sin. Hear it, you who, amid the tortures of a guilt-oppressed conscience, are inquiring, "What must I do to obtain mercy and forgiveness?" Hear it, you who once walked in the way of holiness, but have turned aside to sin and folly. Hear it, you who are resigning yourselves to dark despair, tempted to terminate a present misery by the self-infliction of a future, a more fearful and interminable one. Oh, hear it, all you poor and wretched, you humble and penitent, you broken-hearted and burdened--"This man receives sinners, and eats with them." "Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

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Consider Jesus– in His Atoning Blood

"The blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from every sin." 1 John 1:7

The blood of Jesus is everything. It is the central doctrine of our faith, the present and eternal life of our souls. There is no pardon, no salvation, no heaven but by blood--the blood of the Lord Jesus. Were we to relinquish every other revealed truth, and concentrate upon this one our supreme and lasting study, resolving all our knowledge of the Bible into an 'experimental and personal acquaintance' with ATONING BLOOD--as, like a purple thread, it runs from Genesis to Revelation, it would not be a too exaggerated view of this vital and momentous subject. The blood is everything to us--it is everything to God. He provided it, is satisfied with it, beholds it, and when He sees it on the soul, that soul becomes a living and a lovely soul in His sight. May our meditation on atoning blood exalt our views of its dignity, increase in us its power, and endear to our hearts the preciousness of Him who shed it!

The blood of Jesus is DIVINE. It is the blood of God's Son, the God-man Christ Jesus. In this consists its sovereign virtue. The Divine nature of Christ rendered His obedience and death an offering and a sacrifice to God of a sweet-smelling savor.

The blood of Jesus is ATONING. It was shed for sin, it has made to Divine justice a full satisfaction for sin, it puts away sin. Is sin your burden, O my soul? Is it for your sins you do moan and weep, and are cast down? Behold, the sin-atoning blood of Jesus; believe, and weep no more. Here is that before which not a sin can stand.

The blood of Jesus is CLEANSING. It "cleanses us." Oh, this is what you do so deeply need, my soul! Sin-forgiving, guilt-removing, heart-cleansing, conscience-purifying blood. All this is the blood of Jesus to you. Wash in it, and you shall be whiter than snow. "He that is washed is clean, every whit." And mark the tense of the wonderful words on which this meditation is based--it is the present tense. The blood "cleanses." It has cleansed, it will cleanse, but, as touching our daily walk as believers in Jesus, we have to do with its present cleansing. In our Christian travel through a sinful world the feet are apt to slide, prone to wander, and are constantly contracting fresh defilement, needing the daily washing in the blood. What a sweet thought, O my soul! that the fountain is open, and the blood cleanses, even now cleanses us, from all sin.

The blood of Jesus SPEAKS. "The blood of Christ that speaks." Oh, what a voice has the blood of Jesus! What sweetness and majesty, what gentleness and power! It speaks, and the troubled conscience is at rest; it speaks, and the broken heart is healed; it speaks, and the tormenting doubt is hushed; it speaks, and the trembling fear is quelled. It speaks, also, within the veil. The voice of Jesus' blood is heard in glory, sweeter and louder than the voices of all the minstrels round about the throne. My soul, the voice of Jesus' blood pleads louder for you in heaven, than all your sins can plead against you on earth.

It is sprinkled blood--that is, APPLIED blood. Therefore it is called, "the blood of sprinkling." The blood of Jesus practically will not avail us unless applied to the conscience, just as the blood of the Paschal lamb had availed nothing to the Israelite, when the first-born of Egypt was slain, had it not been sprinkled upon his house. And so God said, "When I SEE the BLOOD, I will pass over you." O my soul! look well to this. Why is it that you are so doubting and fearful? Why are you not walking in a full sense of your pardon and acceptance in JESUS–basking in the sunshine of a present and assured salvation? Is it not because you are stopping short of the applied blood? Oh, come to the blood, the blood of sprinkling! Keep no guilt upon your conscience, no anguish for uncleansed sin in your heart; but wash daily in the precious blood of Christ, which cleanses from ALL sin.

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        Consider Jesus– in the Power of His Resurrection

        "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection." –Phil. 3:10

        Is there not some danger of lingering too exclusively at the cross, to the exclusion of the grave of Jesus? In other words, do we give the subject of Christ's RESURRECTION that place in our faith and meditation which we give to His Death, and which God gives it in the great scheme of our salvation? Essential and precious as the atoning Death of Jesus is, it had availed us nothing apart from His Resurrection. We needed more than death--we needed life! We needed more than the bond presented by Divine justice, and paid--we needed the seal of its acceptance on the part of God. This was given when God raised up Jesus from the dead, "who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification."

        Christ's Resurrection from the grave by the power of God was the Father's attestation to the completeness of the Son's work, and His public acknowledgment of its acceptance. Thus the Resurrection of Christ is to us what a legal acknowledgment is at the hands of a creditor whose claim has been met, whose bond is cancelled. The believing soul sees in the emptied tomb of Jesus the evidence and the acknowledgment of his full discharge from all the demands of Law and all the threatenings of justice. Now, it is the power of this truth in our souls that more immediately concerns us. The Resurrection of Jesus is an accomplished fact--what we want to experience is, His Resurrection-life in our heart. This was Paul's prayer--"That I may know Christ, and the POWER of His Resurrection."

        We first feel this when we realize our mystical union with Jesus. There can be no experience of the power of anything apart from a personal contact with it. Let us first settle the question, "Am I one with Christ?" Have I a vital and spiritual union with the Savior? If so, then I am risen with Him, as the apostle says--"If you be risen with Christ." O my soul, consider into what an exalted and blessed state your union with Christ places you, making you, through free and sovereign grace, a partaker of all that He was, of all that He now is, and of all that He will be when He comes with all His saints in majesty and glory.

        By the power of Christ's Resurrection, we enter into a new, or resurrection-life--"Quickened together with Him." Our blessed Lord, when He rose from the dead, rose with a new-born life. Leaving in the tomb the grave-clothes--the napkin and the shroud--He came back clad with His resurrection robes--a new and wondrous life! Of this resurrection-life all are partakers who know the POWER of His Resurrection.

        O my soul, fear not, then, that anything shall ever separate you from Christ. This cannot be, since your spiritual life is bound up and hidden with the Resurrection-life of Jesus.

        The power of Jesus' Resurrection is experienced by us when by it we rise above earth, and "seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God." Has Jesus risen? Then we, also, must rise. As He left death and earth behind Him, so we, if we be risen with Him, "through faith of the operation of God, who raised Him from the dead," must rise superior to the deadly pomps and vanities of this poor world, and walk with God in "newness of life." Oh to feel the "power of His Resurrection," in a life dead to sin and the world, but living to holiness and God!

        We wait to know yet more of the "power of Christ's Resurrection," when the trumpet of the Archangel shall sound, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. The slumber of the grave gently broken, the glorified spirit returns to its awakened dust--then both ascends into the air to meet the descending Lord. O blessed, glorious consummation of the power of Christ's Resurrection!

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        Consider Jesus– in His Second Appearing

        "Looking for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." –Titus 2:13

        A Savior 'to come' has been the hope of the Church of God in every age and dispensation. The Old Testament saints looked for His coming to save; the saints of the New Testament look for His coming to reign--even "The GLORIOUS appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." There are, in fact, three personal appearances of our Lord mentioned in the Scriptures. His first, when "He APPEARED to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." The second, "Now to APPEAR in the presence of God forever." The third, when "He shall APPEAR the second time without sin (that is, without a sin-offering) unto salvation." In each of these appearances of Jesus, my soul! you have a personal and precious interest. His past appearance was to save you, His present appearance is to intercede for you, His future appearance will be to glorify you.

        And so Jesus is the "Alpha and Omega" of your salvation, from the first eternal throb of love towards you--if we may speak of a beginning of that which in reality had no beginning--to the last throb of love to you--if we may speak of the end of that which in reality has no ending. Thus, Christ is all and in all to you, the First and the Last, and, as good Romaine was used to express it, "and all that comes between." Let us consider Jesus in the light of the blessed hope, His glorious appearing, a befitting subject for the close of our daily meditation upon Him.

        It will be a PERSONAL appearing. As He went up into heaven so will He return--in person. "This SAME Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven." So says God's Word, and so we believe. As His ascension was personal, so will be His coming again. This is a sweet thought, my soul, for you to dwell on. He will come not by His spirit, or by His angels--thus gathering His saints unto Him by proxy--but He will come for them Himself. It will be a personal appearing of the great God, our Savior.

        It will, consequently, be a VISIBLE appearing of Jesus. "Behold, He comes with clouds, and every eye shall see Him." "When He shall appear we shall see Him as He is." Oh the thought of gazing upon His person, of beholding Him robed in majesty divine, and yet looking so human, so like His brethren, of whom He will now appear, more manifest than ever, the Elder Brother!

        He will come WITH ALL HIS SAINTS. Those who sleep in Him will be raised, and those who are alive at His coming will be translated. Moses and Elijah, who appeared with Him in His transfiguration, were eminent representatives of these two conditions of the saints at His coming; Moses, representing those who died, and Elijah, those who will then be translated so that they shall not see death. "The DEAD in Christ shall rise first: then we who are ALIVE and remain on the earth shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." Thus, whether living or dying in the Lord, we shall all meet again around the descending Person of Jesus, heart pulsating with heart, hand clasped in hand, one anthem sweetly chiming from every lip. "Worthy is the Lamb, for He was slain for us."

        This subject is eminently PRACTICAL. It makes Jesus more precious. How quicker beats the pulse and warmer throbs the heart of the bride anticipating the speedy return of her long absent lord! Blessed Jesus! You are the Bridegroom of Your Church, and the Beloved of my soul, and the thought of soon and forever beholding You makes my soul as the wings of Amminadab--unclasped, uplifted, and ready to fly!

        O my soul! let not the coming of the Lord surprise you in a state of unregeneracy, unconverted and unprepared! None can meet Him with joy but those who are BORN AGAIN of the Spirit, washed in His blood, and clothed in His righteousness. Is this your assured condition? Then, happy are you!

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