nChrist
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« Reply #1 on: March 03, 2010, 01:49:56 PM » |
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There are lessons here, which we must not lose. We must not misinterpret God. No doubt some of these people, when pursued by trouble, said that God was hard and cruel and unkind - to send so many losses and sufferings upon them. So it seemed. But here we are permitted to look into God's heart - and see a motive of love in all these sore troubles which He sent upon His people. They had gone far away from Him, and He would bring them back again. One affliction failed, and then He sent another and another and another. These sore troubles were all God's angels of love sent to try to save God's children. We ought to fix this lesson in our hearts, for some time we may need its light.
One came to a pastor with sore complainings against God. He had been most unkind, even cruel, he said. The pastor listened to a recital of a long series of bitter experiences - disappointments, sufferings, hardships. It certainly seemed that if these were God's doings - they were strange expressions of love. But the pastor questioned a little further, as gently as he could, and he learned that his friend had not been living near God during the time of these troubles, and had not been brought nearer to Him through the things which had seemed so hard - he had indeed been drifting farther away all the while, out into the wintry cold of unbelief and rebelliousness.
We may not interpret providences, saying that the history of this friend was the same as that of these ancient people, whom God had chastened to save - but who only went farther away from Him. Yet there is no doubt that the design of God in all His severe dealings with His children is the same - to bring back those who have wandered, or to bring still nearer those who are already near to Him. It is always love, never anger, that comes in the messengers of divine chastening.
"Yet have you not returned unto Me! says the Lord." After each recital of judgment, comes this same sad refrain. God had sent famine to bring them back. "Yet have you not returned unto Me!" He had withheld rain. "Yet have you not returned unto Me!" He had smitten their grain with blasting and mildew, and the palmer-worm had eaten up their vineyards and gardens. "Yet have you not returned unto Me!" He had sent pestilence and war, with terrible loss and devastation. "Yet have you not returned unto Me!" Earthquakes had caused terror over the land, laying much of it in ruin. "Yet have you not returned unto Me!"
This recurring refrain is infinitely pathetic. It sounds like the sob of God's breaking heart. It tells of wonderful love in Him for His people - in spite of all their sin; of love that forbears and waits and pleads and suffers on, never wearying in its efforts to save. It tells, too, of love's sorrow - when the erring do not return. It speaks of divine disappointment when even sore judgments fail to bring back the sinning children. It is a wonderful revealing of the heart of God. No one who catches its meaning, can ever again say that God is cruel or unkind in sending troubles upon His people. He wants to save them - not to hurt or destroy them. We learn, too, what we should always do when any chastening falls upon us; we should get nearer to God! No matter how holy our lives may be, there is yet a holier holiness, a nearer nearness, attainable. If we are conscious of specific sins - we should put them away. We disappoint and grieve God when in any chastening, we do not return unto Him.
God reminds the people of how mercifully He had dealt with them. "You were as a brand plucked out of the burning." This is a striking figure. In the overthrow, probably by an earthquake, some seem to have perished. Those who escaped were almost destroyed, coming out of the overthrow injured, barely saved. They were like a brand, a piece of wood, which has passed through the fire, and has been plucked out, not burned up altogether - but scorched and blackened, partly burned, bearing the marks of the fire upon it. The picture is very suggestive. Sin is a fire. Wherever it touches it burns, scorches, wastes, consumes the beauty. Secret sin is like hidden, smouldering fire, which, unseen - yet eats away the life's substance and defaces the divine image that is on it.
What fire does to the trees when it sweeps through the forests, blackening them, destroying their leaves and all their greenness; sin does to the lives about which its flames flow. We all know lives, once lovely - but now scorched and blackened by sin. If sin is like a fire, human lives are like trees which the fire consumes. Every one of us has been hurt by this fire. Unless plucked out by some hand of love - our lives shall be utterly destroyed by the flames of sin which roll over all this world. But the burning brand may be saved.
A gardener saw one day in a pile of burning rubbish, a piece of root that was blackened and scorched, partly charred. But he plucked it out and, taking it away, he planted it, and it grew. It proved to be the root of a valuable species of grapevine, and in a few years the vine springing from it covered a large arbor and in the autumn days hung full of rich purple clusters. Saved lives are brands plucked from the burning. Thousands of them shine now in blessedness, redeemed from destruction, clothed in beauty, covered with the fruits of righteousness and holiness!
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