Gems for the Week
July 24
"Which is the first commandment of all?" (Mark 12:28)
In other words, the scribe raises the ever recurring question - the question that every devout soul puts up in a more or less articulate way, at some time or other, What does God require of me, What is the one thing I am to seek? What is the supreme good?
We need to observe the way in which our Lord begins His answer. Today, theology is at a discount. We are told it is not a question of how we think of God or Christ, or a matter of creed or doctrine, but of life. Theology need not concern us, say these Modernists. Our Lord overturns at one stroke all such reasoning. He begins by stating a theological proposition, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One Lord." (Mark 12:29)
The necessity of this is obvious. Wrong thoughts about God will give us wrong thoughts about what He requires. Moreover, if to love Him is the supreme thing - and this is what Christ was about to tell His inquirer - we must know the One we are to love. Further, it is due to God that I have right thoughts about Him. Nor is it too much to say that everything begins and ends with knowing Him.
What a profound statement - "The Lord our God is one Lord." (Mark 12:29) "Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one." (Galatians 3:20) For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. " (1 John 5:7)
God is one in His essential Being, and equally one in all His ways. "He cannot deny Himself." Nothing inconsistent with His character marks any of His ways. Nor are His ways inconsistent in themselves. (Russell Elliott - Break of Day)
N.J. Hiebert # 3411
July 25
"Because Thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of
Thy wings will I rejoice." (Psalm 63:7)
These are the wings of JOY.
True joy is found only in Christ. The Christian is the only one who has any right to be joyful. But joy is normal for the Christian. As we are under the shadow of His wings, sheltered from judgment and condemnation, we have every right to rejoice.
I have a friend who was saved after he had reached middle age. His life had been rather "rough and tumble," and, having little education, his speech was not exactly an example of choice diction and rhetoric. One day, while giving his own testimony in public, he said something like this, "The Lord saved me a few years ago, and made me a new creature, and started me on the road to glory. And, as I walk with the Lord day by day, it gets gooder and gooder." That's the way it should be with us. Our experience with the Lord should become "gooder and gooder."
There is a most interesting progress of joy outlined in the New Testament.
- There is joy (Galatians 5:22).
- Great joy (Luke 2:10).
- Exceeding joy (1 Peter 4:13).
- Exceeding great joy (Matthew 2:10).
- Abundance of joy (2 Corinthians 8:2).
- Fulness of joy (John 15:11).
- Unspeakable joy (1 Peter 1:8)
(Wendell P. Loveless - Little Talks on Great Words)
N.J. Hiebert # 3412
July 26
"How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum
of them! If I should count them they are more in number than the sand:
when I awake I am still with Thee." (Psalm 139:17,18)
A story from a children's book tells of a railway into Edinburgh, Scotland, which goes through a long tunnel before coming into the city. There was a certain old lady who lived in the country, who had a great dread of the long, dark tunnel. So, although her friends laughed at her, and tried to tease her out of it, she always used to get our at Abbeyhill, before the tunnel, and go into town by taxi.
One day when the train reached Abbeyhill, she was sleeping and her friends did not awaken her. So she passed through the tunnel she so much feared, in her sleep and never knew it, and when she opened her eyes, she was in the city.
Fear can hamstring the soul. (Traveling Toward Sunrise)
N.J. Hiebert # 3413
July 27
"If ye love Me keep My commandments." (John 14:15)
Love and obedience are cause and effect: depth of love is manifest in fulness of obedience. Just as our Lord simplified the old Law, declaring it to be love to God, and to our neighbour (Matthew 22:35-40); so, the new commandment is summed up in the words, "that ye love one another, as I have loved you." (John 13:34) This love is the most practical thing in the world. The cultivation of religious emotion without the development of practical godliness, is injurious to the soul; feeling which does not end in action is wasted. All emotional, mystical experiences must submit to the plain test: do they help to obedience? If they do, they are valuable: if they do not, they are useless. (Henry Durbanville)
N.J. Hiebert # 3414
