All Noble Things Are Difficult

"Enter ye in at the strait gate . . because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way. . ." (Matthew 7:13-14)

If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all noble things are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but the difficulty of it doesn't make us faint and cave in, it rouses us up to overcome. Do we so appreciate the marvellous salvation of Jesus Christ that we are our very best for Him?

God saves men by His sovereign grace through the Atonement of Jesus; He works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure; but we have to work out that salvation in practical living. If once we start on the basis of His Redemption to do what He commands, we find that we can do it. If we fail, it's because we haven't practised. The crisis will reveal whether we've been practising or not. If we obey the Spirit of God and practise in our physical life what God has put in us by His Spirit, then when the crisis comes, we will find that our own nature as well as the grace of God will stand by us.

Thank God, He does give us difficult things to do! His salvation is a glad thing, but it's also a heroic, holy thing. It tests us for all we are worth. Jesus is bringing many "sons" unto glory, and God will not shield us from the requirements of a son. God's grace turns out men and women with a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ, not milk sops. It takes a tremendous amount of discipline to live the noble life of a disciple of Jesus in actual things. It is always necessary to make an effort to be noble.

Diligence

"O for a closer walk with God!" This is the inward pleading of many a precious blood-washed soul. I beg leave to tell you that that fulness of God, that deep and perfect satisfaction of soul, that sweet feeling of deep reverence, that hushed and sacred feeling of awe; that close walk with God is obtained and retained only by the utmost diligence.

Slothfulness in the Christian life is a sure source of degeneration. Too frequently when believers reach "fair Canaan's happy land" they think they have nothing now to do but to sing and shout and praise God and go to Heaven" on flowery beds of ease." To every newly arrived Christian in Canaan is given the command, "God forward and possess the land." To do this, battles must be fought, giant foes must be defeated, and the greatest diligence must be practiced. God promised ancient Israel to drive out all the nations of Canaan from before them, and that every place whereon the soles of their feet should tread should be theirs, if they would diligently keep all the commandments that the Lord commanded them, to love the Lord, to walk in His ways, and to cleave unto Him. See Deuteronomy 11:22-24.

If we will diligently obey God and go forward at His command He will lead us where the milk and honey flow, and where the pastures are green. Our walk with Him will be sweet and our souls perfectly satisfied.

Since the term diligence is so frequently used in Scripture and such emphasis placed upon it, it is well worth our time to learn its meaning. We often, among the saints, hear testimonies like these: "I am living up to all the Word of God"; or, "All the Bible requires of me, I am doing"; "I love God and find delight in doing all His will," etc. Such expressions are very full of meaning and many sometimes mean more than the witness comprehends. Let me ask you, "Are you as diligent in every respect as the Bible commands you to be?"

Diligence implies an earnest and constant effort to accomplish a desired end--- carefulness, heedfulness, an industry, a close and fixed attention.

Many a heart has been robbed of the love of God because it was not kept by diligence. Many a beloved believer can look back to a few years ago when his soul was more fully satisfied and his heart abounded more in the love of God, and all because diligence was not given to "keep the heart." In Josh. 22:5 the commandment is to take diligent heed to love God, to walk in His ways, to keep His commandments, to cleave unto Him, and to serve Him with all the heart and with all the soul---may the Lord help us to comprehend the strength of this commandment. O how precious! To take diligent heed to love God implies a careful avoidance of everything that would have a tendency to suppress His love in our hearts and to eagerly seek all possible means of increasing that love. All company whose spirit and conversation have a tendency to destroy love is avoided as far as possible without violating the command, "Be courteous." Gossiping: admiration for the pomp and show of the world; careless idle thoughts; fondness for society---all serve to extinguish the love of God in our hearts. Talking with others about God and His works, reading His Word, meditating upon Him, praying, attending meetings, doing good to all men, giving of our means to advance His cause---all these increase the love in our heart toward Him.

To be diligent, to serve the Lord with all the hear and with all the soul, is to be industrious in doing all we can for Him; seeking opportunities of doing good, carefulness in obeying all His commands, testifying to the works of God, and showing forth His praises continually.

Your soul may long for a closer walk with God, and well that it does; but if you do not keep your heart with all diligence from the world, you will never enjoy the blessed experience. But by giving diligence you can have such a walk with God as to fully satisfy your soul.

Do It Now!

"Agree with thine adversary quickly." (Matthew 5:25)

Jesus is laying down this principle - Do what you know you must do, now, and do it quickly; if you don't, the inevitable process will begin to work and you will have to pay to the last farthing in pain and agony and distress. God's laws are unalterable; there's no escape from them. The teaching of Jesus goes straight to the way we are made up.

To see that my adversary gives me my rights is natural; but Jesus says that it's a matter of eternal and imperative importance to me that I pay my adversary what I owe him. From our Lord's standpoint it doesn't matter whether I'm defrauded or not; what does matter is that I do not defraud. Am I insisting on my rights, or am I paying what I owe from Jesus Christ's standpoint?

Do the thing quickly, bring yourself to judgment now. In moral and spiritual matters, you must do it at once; if you don't, the inexorable process will begin to work. God is determined to have His child as pure and clean and white as driven snow, and as long as there's disobedience in any point of His teaching, He will prevent none of the working of His spirit. Our insistence in proving that we are right is nearly always an indication that there has been some point of disobedience. No wonder the Spirit so strongly urges to keep steadfastly in the light!

"Agree with thine adversary quickly." Have you suddenly turned a corner in any relationship and found that you had anger in your heart? Confess it quickly, quickly put it right before God, be reconciled to that one - do it now.

The Inevitable Penalty

"Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou have paid the uttermost farthing." (Matthew 5:26) There is no heaven with a little corner of hell in it. God is determined to make us pure and holy and right; He will not allow us to escape for one moment from the scrutiny of the Holy Spirit. He urged us to come to judgment right away when He convicted us, but we didn't; the inevitable process began to work and now some are in prison, and they will only get out when they have paid the uttermost farthing. "Is this a God of mercy, and of love?" we say. Seen from God's side, it is a glorious ministry of love. God is going to bring us out pure and spotless and undefiled; but He wants us to recognize the disposition we were showing - the disposition of our right to ourself. The moment we're willing that God should alter our disposition, His recreating forces will begin to work. The moment we realize God's purpose, which is to get us rightly related to Himself and then to our fellow men, He will tax the last limit of the universe to help us take the right road. Let's decide it now - "Yes, Lord, I will write that letter to-night"; "I will be reconciled to that man now."

These messages of Jesus Christ are for the will and the conscience, not for the head. If we dispute the Sermon on the Mount with our head, we will blunt the appeal to our heart.

"I wonder why we don't go on with God?" Are we paying our debts from God's standpoint? Let's do now what we'll have to do some day. Every moral call has an "ought" behind it.

One Of God's Great Don'ts

"Fret not thyself, it tendeth only to evil doing." ( Psalm 37:8 [R.V.] )

Fretting means getting out at elbows mentally or spiritually. It's one thing to say "Fret not," but a very different thing to have such a disposition that you find yourself able not to fret. It sounds so easy to talk about "resting in the Lord" and "waiting patiently for Him" until the nest is upset - until we live, as so many are doing, in tumult and anguish, is it possible then to rest in the Lord? If this "don't" doesn't work there, it will work nowhere. This "don't" must work in days of perplexity as well as in days of peace, or it never will work. And if it will not work in your particular case, it will not work in anyone else's case. Resting in the Lord does not depend on external circumstances at all, but on your relationship to God Himself.

Fussing always ends in sin. We imagine that a little anxiety and worry are an indication of how really wise we are; it is much more an indication of how really "wicked" we are. Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way. Our Lord never worried and He was never anxious, because He was not "out" to realize His own ideas; He was "out" to realize God's ideas. Fretting is "wicked" if you are a child of God.

Have you been bolstering up that "stupid" soul of yours with the idea that your circumstances are too much for God? Put all "supposing" on one side and dwell in the shadow of the Almighty. Deliberately tell God that you will not fret about that thing. All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God.

The Pursuit of the Upright

Isa 62:1 For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch.

Isa 62:2 The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.

Isa 62:3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

Isa 62:6 On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You, who put the LORD in remembrance, take no rest,

Isa 62:7 and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.

Isa 62:10 Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples.

Isa 62:12 And they shall be called The Holy People, The Redeemed of the LORD; and you shall be called Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken. (ESV)

In England, John Wesley was asked, “is sanctification to be received instantaneously or is it progressive?” His answer, “both!” In America, Phoebe Palmer taught it was to be instantaneous and D.S. Warner taught the same.

The passages in Isaiah above suggest it is more progressive, yet, not withstanding, it is to be arrived at in this life! There can be no doubt of this, as, “He is coming back for a bride without spot or wrinkle or any such thing!”

This is what needs to be proclaimed in Zion (Jerusalem): the Jerusalem, that is our Mother, which nurtures us, for we are her children! Yes, we are the LORD’S children too, “if we obey Him.”

“Take no rest” in your spirit “until Christ be formed in you!” Be mindful of the Lord every waking minute. You can do it! Zion must do it to be the, City Not Forsaken. Because “This is the will of the Lord for you, even your sanctification.” May His will be done on earth even as it is done in Heaven.

The Spirit of Absolution (Part 1)

Having attended numerous denominations to the full point of familiarity, the Spirit of Christ has made known to me “the spirit of the age.” But first, the background:

If a Covenant People were so deceived with error and tradition in their day of visitation, how is it not likely that the people of this Nation, many professing to be Christian, are not deceived in this day and time? This is not some rare phenomenon that only happens to Pagans, rather, it is most prevalent among those that confess they are religious and Christian---even as did the Jews confessing to be Abraham’s children and followers of Moses!

Do not most Christian Sects believe the same thing, even as the Jews believed much the same thing in their day? Not to be too vague but yes they do! And here in lies the ‘spirit of the age.’

Example: Peter refers to those who have forgotten they were washed from their “past sins.” Why does he say this? Are we not all ‘sinners saved by grace?’ The phrase is a suggestion that we are all still sinning and yet God’s grace is to leave us in our sin and still “save” us in the end! This is what 99%(?) of American Christendom today believe—true story—and everybody knows "fifty thousand" Sectarians can’t be wrong, right?

So how does GRACE become the vehicle that takes a sinning saint, (a sinning saint is an oxymoron), to heaven in their sin? Answer: change the definition of grace to mercy!

Admittedly, most of us in our life have needed a double dose of mercy, however, this does not justify making grace a synonym for mercy. They are two different things, GRACE being God’s power to “save unto the uttermost,” even “from every act that leads to death” (Heb. 9:14 NIV).

And so, having over the course of time, removed the “mandatory” provision and condition that was to be entered into, namely becoming” dead to sin,” we are now told we are sinning saints or at least saved even if we “are in known sin when the Lord returns” ( many teach this false salvation!) It is said by many, “all our sins are already forgiven, all we have to do is confess them.” This lie changes being “dead in our trespasses and sins,” to being alive in them and destroys true Christian Baptism.

The devil and his ministers having accomplished this “damnable heresy”, we now need a ‘double dose’ of MERCY in the Evangelical Camps. In the Orthodox Camps absolution was developed early on, after the first five centuries teaching of “no sin after baptism” was dropped in 431 A.D. And then, in the sixth century, Purgatory was added and further refined, after the so-called Reformation, by Protestantism to the teaching of ONCE SAVED ALWAYS SAVED, also called ETERNAL SECURITY.

A “little leaven leavens the whole lump.” And that is exactly what has happened in the modern churches! Beware that the Serpent does not beguile you as he did Eve. Apostasy is not leaving the church, it is leaving the truth! I encourage you to reach out until you avail yourself of the grace (power) of God found in the Gospel: it is the power of God unto Salvation.

The Spirit of Absolution (Part 2)

Heb 6:6 and having fallen away, it is impossible for them again to renew to repentance, crucifying again for themselves the Son of God, and putting Him to open shame. (LITV)

Heb 9:25-26 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (ESV)

The Roman Catholic Mass is considered a ‘sacrifice for sins.’ It is true that (be it known), we “have an Advocate with the Father” concerning sin, yet, how is “the Son of God crucified afresh” amongst those that claim to be His?

This was not a question that would have been asked nor was it debated among the Ante Nicene Fathers. The majority still held to “the teaching” of “no sin after baptism” to be found in Rms. 6: 2. So, why does this writer belabor this point so often?

What if the record that shows the ‘early church martyr’s teaching’ on sin is really true? Would or should it matter to Christianity Today? If it does, we who know the truth, have an obligation to tell the “deceived” of their error! If it does not, the many will be saved in the end anyway and we are then found “arguing over words.”

These things are not well received among those who hold to an ‘easy believeism” of our day! “Crucifying the Lord afresh,” is simply a matter of knowing “good from evil” after we have come to a full knowledge of the truth (Heb. 10: 26) and then choosing to “willfully sin!” The fact that many religious people are in that state should cause great sobriety to us who imagine we are not!

Having an advocate with the Father and choosing to not willfully sin is how to NOT crucify the Son of God again unto us! Absolution and Confession as practiced by main line Christianity is a direct DENIAL of II Timothy 2: 19 that gives the ‘imperative’ of “must depart from iniquity” as the criteria of “having God’s seal,” which is the Holy Spirit.

One Out of Four Hundred in the Land

2Ch 18:5 Therefore the king of Israel gathered together of prophets four hundred men, and said unto them, Shall we go to Ramothgilead to battle, or shall I forbear? And they said, go up; for God will deliver it into the king's hand.

6 But Jehoshaphat said, is there not here a prophet of the LORD besides that we might enquire of him?

7 And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man, by whom we may enquire of the LORD: but I hate him; for he never prophesied good unto me, but always evil: the same is Micaiah the son of Imla. And Jehoshaphat said, Let not the king say so.

2Ch 19:1 And Jehoshaphat the king of Judah returned to his house in peace to Jerusalem.

2 And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the LORD? Therefore is wrath upon thee from before the LORD.

3 Nevertheless there are good things found in thee, in that thou hast taken away the groves out of the land, and hast prepared thine heart to seek God.

There is tragedy and hope for those whose heart is set on the Lord in the account above! First, (the verses above are only a partial listing of the account), to align one self with the ungodly is to “love” those that hate the Lord! This great error is often made by a simple oversight. To explain, we have co-workers and relatives (as Jehoshaphat said, “your people are as my people”).

Now there is no sin in having aligned ourselves with God’s people, which is the point, rather, the ensample of this tragedy is how simple it is to align ourselves with those reported to be God’s people, as Israel was under the same Covenant as Judah! Plus, they were all relatives! This is brought out in two ways in our text: 1.) A king and the people 2.) The prophets (the majority of the preachers of the day) who prophesy success and prosperity.

Is it not glaring today among church people how friendship with the world in politics especially, is an “alignment” with those “that hate the LORD!” But the harder area to deal with are those among ourselves: parishner’s or our own flesh and blood? And then, there is the hope of those whose heart seeks after God:

As is recorded above, Jehoshaphat went home in peace, not withstanding, the Lord’s wrath was kindled against him! The Spirit of God has given us who have failed Him in this manner hope. Let us consider our ways by “examining ourselves” and turning from what displeases the Lord. Then let us do what Jehoshaphat did after his tragedy, set that and the other things right that have been left undone!

Then we will have a good hope in the Lord if:

2Ch 16:9 For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.

Yes, there is trouble for us who have done foolishly. So, be encouraged God is just, tho He will not requite the guilty neither will He despise the broken hearted nor put out a smoldering wick! Be of good courage and seek after the Lord always. He will not stay angry forever! He does delight in mercy. Glory!

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