CHRIST THE COMPLEMENT OF OUR NEED

[nChrist]

CHRIST THE COMPLEMENT OF OUR NEED
An Old And Beautiful Sermon
By F.B. Meyer

1 Corinthians 10:11

We have now dealt with the will, and have seen that our curse is the self, life. We have also learned that Jesus Christ can take the place of self. I want now to show what Jesus Christ can be, and may the Holy Spirit glorify Christ!

1 Corinthians 10:11 : 'Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come."

Once we were in Egypt. Every one who has been redeemed by the blood of Christ was once in Egypt. Egypt stands for three things:

(1) Sensual pleasure, leeks, garlics, onions;

(2) Bondage, the taskmaster, the brick, and the treasure city; and,

(3) Anguish of soul. I suppose there is not one now in Christ that does not remember rite sensual pleasure, the bondage and the anguish of soul. Out of that God has brought us. He brought us when He brought Christ through death to resurrection, and He brought us when each one (as it were) was sheltered beneath the Paschal Lamb, and the blood spoke to God. Oh blessed moment when we entered into peace, when we put the blood upon the door post and the lintel, and because God saw the blood we were ransomed, and in joy went forth from the land of bondage!

And as we stood upon the further shore of the Red Sea we repeated Miriam's Song, we rejoiced in God our Savior. We gave ourselves up to follow the cloud, we sheltered beneath it by day and by night. We depended upon God for everything--for the water that gushed from the rock, and the manna that fell upon the desert floor. O happy, happy, happy days when we, fresh redeemed and with the consciousness of liberty, walked with God in the first hours of our conversion!

Then we came beneath Sinai. We obtained a new thought of God's holiness and righteousness, and as we first came there we said with all the fervor of a true intention: "Whatever God says, we will do." But our joy began to pass away, for as we tried to keep the law of "God we fell hour by hour into sin that we loathed. It was the experience of the seventh chapter of Romans. After the inward man we loved the law of God, but when we came to do what we would we found we could not. We were like men raised from some illness, who know how to walk perfectly well, but when they begin they totter, and presently fall to the ground.

After staying there, we heard the command of God to arise and depart, and after some days we came to Kadesh-barnea. Now Kadesh is on the frontier of the land of Canaan. At Kadesh the rolling prairie sinks into the sand and waste of the desert. At Kadesh you looked back on Egypt, and forward into Palestine. To Kadesh there came spies, bringing in their hands baskets full of fruit which they had gathered in the Land of Promise, grapes, pomegranates, apricots, sweet and luscious fruit. At Kadesh you passed them round, you ate, you said: " It is a good land."

Many of you have been to Kadesh. You took lodgings there--at Northfield, at Keswick conventions; and men who have been over into the Land of Promise came back, and in their addresses and books they gave you a basket of fruit, and you said: "It is very good."

But there you stopped, and instead of going over the frontier and living in the land, you have gone BACK TO THE DESERT.

Why did Israel stop there? Because she did not believe God. She believed that God could bring her from Egypt, but she could not believe that God could bring her to Canaan. She believed in the God of the past, but she could not believe in the God of every moment. She had an evil heart of unbelief, and departed from the living God.

You believe in Calvary, but not in the ascension. You believe in Christ who died, but not in Christ who rose and lives. You believe in conversion as a past fact, but you have no idea that He who converted you is prepared hour by hour to bring you into and to keep you in the Land of Rest.
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[nChrist]

CHRIST THE COMPLEMENT OF OUR NEED
An Old And Beautiful Sermon
By F.B. Meyer

The wilderness stands for three things.

First. Restlessness; a redeemed people, but restless. There is a chapter in Numbers, and thirty-three times in it we are told that the people removed. That, has been your life for years, to and fro, trying this church and that, this minister and that minister, but all the while certain that you have not got God's rest.

Secondly. It stands for discontent; they murmured. And what a murmuring life yours is! You have got riches, love, happy, happy surroundings, but there is always something that you want altered. Discontent! If it is summer, it is too hot. If it is winter, it is too cold. If you have love you want money, and if you have money you want love. Backwards and forwards, full of restless murmuring and discontent. That has been your life as a Christian. Thirdly. It stands for back-yearning, yearning backwards. The people had come out of Egypt, but they were always thinking about it. And your life is a negative life. You are out of Egypt, but you go as near Egypt as you can, and you look over into the pleasures of Egypt, you look over into the doings of Egypt, you look over into the passions and sins of Egypt, and though you are out of it your heart hungers after it. You are a Christian, but a worldly man has a happier time than you, for the worldly man has never had a glimpse of what you have. He is contented. You have enough religion to make you wretched.

What next? You came to Jordan. The poet has taught us to think that Jordan means death, the death of the body; but that is a false conception. In God's imagery the Jordan stands for death, but not the death of the body, but death to the self-life. I trust I have made it clear that I do not believe that self ever dies. I do not believe in the eradication of self, out I believe we come to the cross, to Jordan, and we put the cross, the death of Christ, between ourselves and our past life. We pass through the Jordan in our own experience when we unite ourselves with Christ's death, and are planted with Him in the likeness of His death. After that we stand in the land of Canaan.

At Kadesh you looked over, but now you are in. You do not feel much. When you awoke you thought you would feel joy, but it is not so. You are quiet and still. Never mind! A man may cross the equator and not know it. The equator is marked on the map, but not on the ocean, and a man may cross it and not know it. Without emotion or passion, relying upon the Holy Ghost to make your reckoning true, you have passed Jordan, you are now in the land.

AND WHAT IS THE LAND?

The land is Christ. Canaan is Christ. He is the Land of Promise. "Those mountains are the mountains of His strength. Those valleys are His humility. Those springs are His joy. Those rivers are His Holy Spirit Those treasures are His wealth. That land--look at it! It is all yours. It is Christ in you, and you in Christ--that is Paradise.

That is proved by Hebrews 3:14 : "We are made partakers of Christ." The third chapter of Hebrews is the wilderness experience. The fourth chapter is the Christ possession; and the Apostle says that we who believe are made to partake of Christ. Christ in us, Christ around us, Christ in the glory! I want to talk to you about that,

The first thing to do is to get to know the land. I remember when I was in Chicago some one told me that a family may purchase, or obtain from your Government, a farm in the far West. Gathering their goods together, a father, mother, and children will travel in the caravan (as we would call it in England), to the far West. They will sit in their house on the edge of their inheritance whilst the father surveys it. Leaving his wife and children, he climbs the mountain, and looks that way and this way, down to the river, away to the mountain; and all that tract is his. He walks to and fro. He says to himself: "It is a good land." He comes back home, and says to his wife:

"Wife, we have got a grand inheritance."

That is the first thing he does.

The second is this. He gets some hurdles, and stakes off a part, and cultivates it. Next year he pushes the hurdles back, and takes more and cultivates that, and year after year he pushes the hurdles further back, until at last in twenty years his hurdles have reached the extent of his territory, and he has brought the whole of it under cultivation.

Now come with me. Come climb this mountain, the mountain of the Holy Ghost's teaching, and (1) see what a Christ we have got; and before I close we will encircle a little bit of Christ, we will (2) take Him. To-morrow we will push the hurdle further out, and take more of Christ, and the day after more, and the week after more, and year after year more. Only in eternity you will never put your fence of occupation on the margin of Christ's fulness, for when you have gone your furthest, still Christ will be eternally more.

Now see what Christ is. Look at 1 Corinthians 2:12 : "That we might know the things that are freely given to us of God."
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[nChrist]

CHRIST THE COMPLEMENT OF OUR NEED
An Old And Beautiful Sermon
By F.B. Meyer

They tell me that George Macdonald, wanting to teach his children honor and truth and trust, places on the mantel-shelf of the common room in their house, money enough for the whole use of his family. If the wife wants money she goes for it, if the boys and girls want money they go for it; whatever want there is in that house is supplied from that mantel, shelf deposit. So God put in Jesus everything the soul can want, and He says: "Go and take it. It is all there for you."

Are you in sorrow? In Christ there is joy. Are you tempted? In Christ there is succor. Are you at the end of your strength? In Jesus there is might. I recall those words, however, because you might think that God gives this or that apart from Christ. Let me put it more correctly so: you take Christ to be whatever you want, and He is the supply of your want, your need, so that you are blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ in heavenly places. All that you want is in Christ, and I think it is a good thing to want in order to learn what there is in Christ.

I remember when I was a boy my mother never took so much notice of me as when I was disappointed and weak and ill and worn. I think sometimes I used to sham a bit because my mother always did so much for me then. It is when "you are weak and weary, and your faith has gone, and your strength is exhausted, and your hopes are vanishing, and everything around is passing from your grasp,--it is then that God comes and says: "Child, I have put into Jesus everything your spirit wants"; and though, like Madam Guion, you have to spend ten years in jail, Christ will be friends and comfort and strength and society, and all you want.

Would that people might understand what Jesus can be to the soul,--these people who have been going into society, to the play, to the opera, to worldly pleasure, into the old past, thinking that they must obtain peace and joy in them, and they are only disappointed! Would that I could tell them that in Jesus they have mountains and lakes and rivers and streams and treasures and corn-fields and olive yards, and everything a soul can want to make it blessed! Spirit of God, take of the things of Christ and reveal them to every waiting heart!

I now want you to see,

HOW TO TAKE,

Because John says that of His fulness we have all received, and Paul says that they which receive abundance of life shall reign. RECEIVE.

Do you know how to receive? You say:

"Sir, I suppose you mean, I need to pray."

No, sir, I do not mean that. You have been praying long enough. I want you to leave off praying in a sense, and to begin taking. There is all the difference in the world between praying for Christ, and taking Christ. I will explain. Years ago, I was staying with Canon Wilberforce at Southampton--it was in the first flush of my new surrender. One autumn night he said:

"We will sit around the fire and give our experiences."

Lord Radstock sat next to me, and he commenced. I followed, and talked as a young convert to this great teaching will talk--a good deal about my surrender to Christ. An old clergyman who sat on the other side of the circle, arose and said:

"I am very startled that Mr. Meyer has nothing better than that. To hear him talk you would suppose that we had only got to give up. Now my religion is taking in, taking in first, and dropping and giving up afterwards."

When you get gold you part with dross, and when you get real diamonds you part with paste. Get Christ, and the world attracts you no more. Give me sunlight, and I will dispense with electric light. Give me the light of day, I need no artificial luminary.

He continued: "I used once to be overcome by temper. I fought against temper. I came to the end of myself one afternoon when a number of children refused to listen to my teaching. I was on the point of losing my temper, when I turned to Christ, and said: ' Christ, be my sweet temper.' "
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[nChrist]

CHRIST THE COMPLEMENT OF OUR NEED
An Old And Beautiful Sermon
By F.B. Meyer

Instead of fighting against bad temper, he took Christ to be his patience, his humility, his meekness, his self-control. I saw in a moment that it was a better experience. I remember next morning when Canon Wilberforce came down stairs, as we stood together he said:

"What did you think of that last night?"

I replied: "I think it will mark an era in my life."

He said: "It will do the same in mine."

From that minute I have tried to live that way, and whatever I have needed, I have said: "Christ, be this in me." That is the good fruit of the land.

Will you take this? Jesus does love you. Jesus is always near you. I do not talk about the cross so much as about Jesus who was crucified. I do not talk about the grave, but about Jesus who rose. I do not talk about the ascension, but about Jesus who ascended. He is with you and me always. It is not holiness, but it is Jesus the holy one. It is not meekness, it is Jesus the meek one. It is not purity, it is Jesus the pure one. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! not it, not an experience, not emotion, not faith, but JESUS.

You have been worrying about your faith. Give it up! Do not think about your faith; think about Jesus, and you will have faith without knowing it. You have been worrying about your feeling. It does not matter, it goes up and down with the barometer. Have done with it, and live in the presence of Jesus.

Soul, thou and Jesus are standing face to face. Give thy whole self to Him and He gives His whole self to thee. Go to your bare garret, go to your dying child, go to scenes of trouble and sorrow and pain, He goes too. You have got the fountain beside you. You do not need to take your pitcher and go to draw in some external well. You have Jesus in your heart, a fountain springing up to everlasting life.

O soul, how rich thou art, who, passing through Jordan, hast come into the good land of rest!

(My Note:  If CHRIST is ALL you have, you have ALL!)