‘He celebrates and sings because of you.’

(Zep 3:17) 17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. ESV

     Some of us think so little of ourselves that we’d rather be in a bad relationship than none at all. Being around people doesn’t guarantee you won’t feel lonely. Actually, being with the wrong people guarantees you’ll end up feeling empty and used. Until you overcome your fear of being alone and wait for God to give you the right relationships, you’ll continue to feel lonely. Sometimes loneliness is more about not liking yourself than about not having people around who like you. Otherwise, why would you spend so much energy avoiding rejection instead of building healthy relationships? Perhaps you think if you don’t get involved you won’t get hurt. Or you’re afraid to open up in case people criticise you for sharing anything personal. Such anxieties just contribute to your sense of isolation. Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said, ‘What you picture in your mind, your mind will go to work to accomplish. When you change your pictures, you automatically change your performance.’ So: 1) You need a true picture of how God sees you. Paul says, ‘Because of what Christ has done we have become gifts…God…delights in’ (Ephesians 1:11 TLB). Zephaniah writes, ‘He celebrates and sings because of you, and he will refresh your life with his love.’ 2) You need a true picture of yourself. David said, ‘You…put me together inside my mother’s body, and I praise you because of the wonderful way you created me. Everything you do is marvellous!’ (Psalm 139:13-14 CEV). Having these two pictures clearly in mind stops you from operating with a devalued self-image, and enables you to ask for what you need in a relationship.

     He entered Yale College at age 13 and graduated with honors. He became a pastor, and his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God” started the Great Awakening, a revival that swept America, uniting the colonies prior to the Revolution. He became President of Yale College. His name was Jonathan Edwards, born this day, October 5, 1703. Jonathan married Sarah Pierrepont, and their descendants included: a U.S. Vice-President, 3 U.S. Senators, 3 governors, 3 mayors, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 65 professors, 80 public office holders, 100 lawyers, and nearly 100 missionaries.

     Truly the course of events has been the answer to this question easier than at first. We are driven by events to believe that a great moral blindness has befallen Germany; that its God, ceasing to be Christian, has become but Semitic; that it has lost the sense of the great imponderables; that the idolatry of the State has barrack-bound the conscience of the Church and stilled that witness of the kingdom of God which beards kings and even beheads them. We are forced to think that the cause of righteousness has passed from its hands with the passing from them of humanity, with the submersion of the idea of God’s kingdom in nationality or the cult of race, with the worship of force, mammon, fright, and ruthlessness, with the growth of national cynicism in moral things, and with the culture of a withering, self-searing hate which is the nemesis of mortal sin, and which even God cannot use as He can use anger, but must surely judge. This people has sinned against its own soul, and abjured the kingdom of God. That settles our prayer for victory. We must pray for the side more valuable for the kingdom of God—much as we have to confess.

     It would more than repay much calamity if we were moved and enlarged to a surer sense, a greater use, and a franker confession of the power of prayer for life, character, and history. There is plenty of discussion of the present situation, historic, ethical, or political, and much of it is competent, and even deep. There is much speculation about the situation after the War, at home and abroad. But its greatest result may be the discredit of elegant, paltering, and feeble types of religion, the end of the irreligious wits and fribbles, and the rise of a new moral seriousness and a new spiritual realism. Many will be moved, in what seems the failure of civilization, to a new reliance on the Church, and especially on the more historic, ethical, and positive Churches, which have survived the paganism of culture and which ride the waves of storm. Yet even these impressions can evaporate unless they are fixed by action. And the action that fixes them in their own kind is prayer—prayer which is really action. A religion of prosperity grows dainty, petty, sentimental, and but pseudo-heroic. We unlearn our fathers’ creed that religion is, above all things, an act, that worship is the greatest act of which man is capable, and that true worship culminates in the supreme labour, and even sorrow, of real prayer. This is man at his utmost; and it has for it near neighbours all the great things that men or nations do. But when a nation must go to righteous war it embarks on one of the very greatest acts of its life, especially if its very existence as a servant of God’s kingdom hang on it. A state of war is really the vast and prolonged act of a corporate soul, with a number of minor acts organized into it. It is capable of being offered to a God whose kingdom is a public campaign moving through history, and coming by the faith, toil, peril, sacrifice, grief, and glory of nations, as well as the hearts and souls. It is not possible to separate moral acts so great and solemn as the act of prayer (especially common and corporate prayer) and the act of war; nor to think them severed in the movement, judgment, and purpose of the Eternal. And we are forced into paradox again. The deeper we go down into the valley of decision the higher we must rise (if we are to possess and command our souls) into the mount of prayer, and we must hold up the hands of those whose chief concern is to prevail with God. If we win we shall have a new sense of power amid all our loss and weakness; but what we shall need most of all if the power to use that power, and to protest us from our victory and its perilous sequels, whether of pride or poverty. And if we do not win we shall need it more. There will be much to sober us either way, more perhaps than ever before in our history.

     But that is not all, and it is not enough. As Christian people we need something to sanctify that very sobering and to do for the new moral thoughtfulness itself what that does for the peace-bred levity of the natural man. For such a purpose there is no agent like prayer—serious, thinking, private prayer, or prayer in groups, in small, grave, congenial, understanding groups—prayer with the historic sense, church-nurtured and Bible-fed. Public prayer by all means, but, apart from liturgical form, the more open the occasions and the larger the company the more hard it may be to secure for such prayer the right circumstances or the right lead. Public facility is apt to outstrip the real intimacy and depth with God. While on the other hand, the prayer that freely rises and aptly flows in our audience of God may be paralyzed in an audience of men. So that public prayer does not always reflect the practice of private petition as the powerful factor it is in Christian life and history. It does not always suggest a door opened in heaven, the insight or fellowship of eternal yet historic powers in awful orbits. It does not always do justice to our best private prayer, to private prayer made a business and suffused with as much sacred mind as goes to the more secular side even of the Christian life. Should ministers enlist? it is asked. But to live in true and concrete prayer is to be a combatant in the War, as well as a statesman after it, if statesmen ought to see the whole range of forces at work. The saintly soldier still needs the soldier saint. Yet so much prayer has ceased to be a matter of thought, will, or conflict, and religion therefore has become so otiose, that it is not easy even for the Christian public to take such a saying as more than a phrase. This is but one expression of a general scepticism, both in the Church and out, about prayer, corporate or private, as power with God, and therefore as momentous in the affairs of life and history. But momentous and effectual it must be. Other things being equal, a voluntary and convinced army is worth more than a conscript one. So to know that we are morally right means worlds for our shaping of the things that face us and must be met; and we are never so morally right as in proficient prayer with the Holy One and the Just. It has, therefore, a vast effect on the course of things if we believe at all in their moral destiny. More is wrought by it than the too wise world wots; and all the more as it is the prayer of a great soul or a great Church. It is a power behind thrones, and it neutralizes, at the far end, the visible might of armies and their victories. It settles at last whether morality or machinery is to rule the world. If it lose battles, it wins in the long historic campaign. Whereas, if we have no such action with God, we lose delicacy of perception in the finer forces of affairs; we are out of touch and understanding with the final control in things, the power that is working to the top always; we become dense in regard to the subtle but supreme influences that take the generals and chancellors by surprise; and we are at the mercy of the sleepless action of the kingdom of evil on the world. It is a fatal thing to under estimate the enemy; and it is in Christian prayer, seriously and amply pursued, that the soul really learns to gauge evil’s awful and superhuman power in affairs. I am speaking not only of the single soul, perhaps at the moment not chiefly, but of the soul and prayer of a society like the true Church or a sobered people. The real power of prayer in history is not a fusillade of praying units of whom Christ is the chief, but it is the corporate action of a Saviour-Intercessor and His community, a volume and energy of prayer organized in a Holy Spirit and in the Church the Spirit creates. The saints shall thus judge the world and control life. Neither for the individual nor for the Church is true prayer an enclave in life’s larger and more actual course. It is not a sacred enclosure, a lodge in some vast wilderness. That is the weak side of pietism. But, however intimate, it is in the most organic and vital context of affairs, private and public, if all things work together, deeply and afar, for the deep and final kingdom of God. Its constant defeat of our egoism means the victory of our social unity and its weal. For the egoist neither prays nor loves. On the other hand, such prayer recalls us from a distraught altruism, teeming with oddities, and frayed down to atomism by the variety of calls upon it; because the prayer is the supreme energy of a loving will and believing soul engaged with the Love that binds the earth, the sun, and all the stars. So far it is from being the case that love to God has no sphere outside love to man that our love to man perishes unless it is fed by the love that spends itself on God in prayer, and is lifted thereby to a place and a sway not historic only, but cosmic.

Certain thoughts are prayers.
There are moments when,
whatever be the attitude of the body,
the soul is on its knees.
--- Victor Hugo


The higher goal of spiritual living
is not to amass a wealth of information,
but to face sacred moments.
--- Abraham Joshua Heschel


Those who deny freedom deserve it not for themselves; and under a just God, cannot long retain it.
--- Abraham Lincoln

... from here, there and everywhere

     CHAPTER 11.

     How The Jews Were Crucified Before The Walls Of The City Concerning Antiochus Epiphanes; And How The Jews Overthrew The Banks That Had Been Raised By The Romans.

     1. So now Titus's banks were advanced a great way, notwithstanding his soldiers had been very much distressed from the wall. He then sent a party of horsemen, and ordered they should lay ambushes for those that went out into the valleys to gather food. Some of these were indeed fighting men, who were not contented with what they got by rapine; but the greater part of them were poor people, who were deterred from deserting by the concern they were under for their own relations; for they could not hope to escape away, together with their wives and children, without the knowledge of the seditious; nor could they think of leaving these relations to be slain by the robbers on their account; nay, the severity of the famine made them bold in thus going out; so nothing remained but that, when they were concealed from the robbers, they should be taken by the enemy; and when they were going to be taken, they were forced to defend themselves for fear of being punished; as after they had fought, they thought it too late to make any supplications for mercy; so they were first whipped, and then tormented with all sorts of tortures, before they died, and were then crucified before the wall of the city. This miserable procedure made Titus greatly to pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews; nay, some days they caught more: yet it did not appear to be safe for him to let those that were taken by force go their way, and to set a guard over so many he saw would be to make such as great deal them useless to him. The main reason why he did not forbid that cruelty was this, that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterwards be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies.

     2. But so far were the seditious from repenting at this sad sight, that, on the contrary, they made the rest of the multitude believe otherwise; for they brought the relations of those that had deserted upon the wall, with such of the populace as were very eager to go over upon the security offered them, and showed them what miseries those underwent who fled to the Romans; and told them that those who were caught were supplicants to them, and not such as were taken prisoners. This sight kept many of those within the city who were so eager to desert, till the truth was known; yet did some of them run away immediately as unto certain punishment, esteeming death from their enemies to be a quiet departure, if compared with that by famine. So Titus commanded that the hands of many of those that were caught should be cut off, that they might not be thought deserters, and might be credited on account of the calamity they were under, and sent them in to John and Simon, with this exhortation, that they would now at length leave off [their madness], and not force him to destroy the city, whereby they would have those advantages of repentance, even in their utmost distress, that they would preserve their own lives, and so find a city of their own, and that temple which was their peculiar. He then went round about the banks that were cast up, and hastened them, in order to show that his words should in no long time be followed by his deeds. In answer to which the seditious cast reproaches upon Caesar himself, and upon his father also, and cried out, with a loud voice, that they contemned death, and did well in preferring it before slavery; that they would do all the mischief to the Romans they could while they had breath in them; and that for their own city, since they were, as he said, to be destroyed, they had no concern about it, and that the world itself was a better temple to God than this. That yet this temple would be preserved by him that inhabited therein, whom they still had for their assistant in this war, and did therefore laugh at all his threatenings, which would come to nothing, because the conclusion of the whole depended upon God only. These words were mixed with reproaches, and with them they made a mighty clamor.

     3. In the mean time Antiochus Epiphanes came to the city, having with him a considerable number of other armed men, and a band called the Macedonian band about him, all of the same age, tall, and just past their childhood, armed, and instructed after the Macedonian manner, whence it was that they took that name. Yet were many of them unworthy of so famous a nation; for it had so happened, that the king of Commagene had flourished more than any other kings that were under the power of the Romans, till a change happened in his condition; and when he was become an old man, he declared plainly that we ought not to call any man happy before he is dead. But this son of his, who was then come thither before his father was decaying, said that he could not but wonder what made the Romans so tardy in making their attacks upon the wall. Now he was a warlike man, and naturally bold in exposing himself to dangers; he was also so strong a man, that his boldness seldom failed of having success. Upon this Titus smiled, and said he would share the pains of an attack with him. However, Antiochus went as he then was, and with his Macedonians made a sudden assault upon the wall; and, indeed, for his own part, his strength and skill were so great, that he guarded himself from the Jewish darts, and yet shot his darts at them, while yet the young men with him were almost all sorely galled; for they had so great a regard to the promises that had been made of their courage, that they would needs persevere in their fighting, and at length many of them retired, but not till they were wounded; and then they perceived that true Macedonians, if they were to be conquerors, must have Alexander's good fortune also.

          The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem, by Flavius Josephus Translator: William Whiston

                The bias of degeneration

     Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. --- Romans 5:12.

     The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Heb. 9:26)—an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. When Our Lord faced men with all the forces of evil in them, and men who were clean living and moral and upright, He did not pay any attention to the moral degradation of the one or to the moral attainment of the other; He looked at something we do not see, viz., the disposition.

     Sin is a thing I am born with and I cannot touch it; God touches sin in Redemption. In the Cross of Jesus Christ God redeemed the whole human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a man responsible for having the heredity of sin. The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I realize Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “And this is the judgment” (the critical moment) “that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light.”

                Again

What to do? It's the old boredom
  Come again: indolent grass,
  Wind creasing the water
  Hardly at all; a bird floating
  Round and round. For one hour
  I have known Eden, the still place
  We hunger for. My hand lay
  Innocent; the mind was idle.

Nothing has changed; the day goes on
  With its business, watching itself
  In a calm mirror. Yet I know now
  I am ready for the sly tone
  Of the serpent, ready to climb
  My branches after the same fruit.

     Some argue that the second half of Isaiah was written by a person other than Isaiah the son of Amoz. There is a dramatic change in theme and emphasis. But the real reason for postulating two Isaiahs lays in the refusal of liberal scholars to accept the supernatural. Isaiah spoke of Babylon before that city was capital of a world power. He even named Cyrus, the Persian who overcame Babylon. Only God could have known ahead of time.

     Why do conservatives maintain the unity of this great book?

• The Jews treated this book as a unity and believed Isaiah
     wrote it.
• New Testament writers who quote Isaiah treat passages
     from the first and second halves the same.
• Jesus, given the “scroll of the Prophet Isaiah” read from
     61:1–2 (Luke 4:17–19).
• Similar passages occur in both parts of the book
     (cf. 1:15 with 59:3; 30:26 with 60:19).
• The book maintains a strong theological unity, and uses
     terms and names of God in both sections unique to Isaiah.
• Prophetic utterances often foretell distant events. The
     predictive elements in Isaiah are in full harmony with
     the Bible’s general supernaturalism.
• The two-Isaiah theory was not introduced until the 18th
     century. It was offered by antisupernaturalists to explain
     away the predictive accuracy of the book. That view has
     no basis in history, nor is compelling evidence found in
     Scripture.

     How good to know that in the Word of God we have revealed truth. The God who speaks through Isaiah was well able to tell the future then, and still speaks to us today.

     Commentary

     This is what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from Me there is no God. Who then is like Me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before Me what has happened since I established My ancient people, and what is yet to come—yes, let him foretell what will come. Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.

     With Isaiah 40 we move into the second half of Isaiah, and immediately burst into a fresh and joyful world. A tone of optimism and celebration pervades these last chapters of the prophet’s work. We hear that tone in the very first words of Isaiah 40:

     In this half of Isaiah the prophet seems to look back on judgment past. The prospect of terror is gone. Now comes the promised joy. Isaiah looks beyond even the Babylonian Captivity of Judah, still a hundred years in his future. There Isaiah sees Babylon’s power shattered by Cyrus of Persia (Isa. 45–46). He looks even beyond this to the restoration of all things. In prophetic vision Isaiah sees history’s end, when God will say to His redeemed people:

     Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.… To give drink to My people, My chosen, the people I formed for Myself that they may proclaim My praise.
--- Isaiah 43:18–21.

     In the new world, former things will not be remembered or come to mind. God will make all things new.
--- Isaiah 44:6–8.

     By the breath of God frost is given. --- Job 37:10. KJV

     The leaves are down. (500 selected sermons) The warmth has gone out of the air. The birds have winged southward. The landscape has been scarred by the autumnal equinox. Another element now comes to bless and adorn and instruct the world. It is the frost. The palaces of this king are far up in the Arctic, glittering winter palaces of ice, [and] from those hard, white, portals King Frost descends and waves his silvery scepter over our temperate zone. You already feel his breath in the night wind. By most considered an enemy, the frost is a friend, charged with lessons potent and tremendous.

     There are passages of Scripture that once were enigmas and impossible for you to understand, but the frosts of trouble after awhile exposed the full meaning to your soul. You said, “I do not see why David keeps rolling over in his Psalms the story of how he was pursued and persecuted.” He describes himself as surrounded by bees. You think, What an exaggeration for him to exclaim, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord” (Ps. 130:1). There is so much lamentation in his writings you think he overdoes it. But after awhile the frost comes upon you in the shape of persecution, and you are pierced with censure, wounded with defamation, and stung with lies in swarms [that] are buzzing about your ears, and at last you understand what David meant.

     For a long while a disproportionate amount of the Bible seemed given to consolation. Why page after page and chapter after chapter taken up with comforts [and] consolations? The Book seems like an apothecary, one-half of the shelves occupied with soothing salves. But after a while, bankruptcy, sickness, and bereavement. Now the consolatory parts of the Bible do not seem disproportionate. You want something off almost all the shelves of that sacred dispensary. What has uncovered to you the usefulness of so much of the Bible that was hidden before? The frosts have been fulfilling their mission.

     Thank God for frosts. What helped make Milton the greatest of poets? The frost of blindness. What helped make Washington the greatest of generals? The frost of Valley Forge. Special trials fit for special work.

     Without complaint, take the hard knocks. It will not take long for God to make up to you in the next world for all you have suffered in this. Trouble comes for beneficial purpose, and on the coldest nights the aurora is brightest in the northern heavens.

--- T. DeWitt Talmage

     The Tower of London, sitting forbiddingly on the Thames, is a small village within impregnable walls. It has served as a palace, a fortress, and, more ominously, a prison. Here a young Catholic named John Gerard suffered for his faith during the reign of Protestant Queen Elizabeth I.

     He was a Jesuit priest, educated on the Continent, who began covertly performing priestly work in England at age 18, moving from place to place one step ahead of the law. He was eventually captured and taken to the Clink, a prison so infamous that its name lives to this day. For three years he was kept there, sometimes chained, often attempting to escape. Then he was moved to the Tower.

     One of the buildings there, the White Tower, contains a deep vault without windows or outer doors. There in the eerie glow of flickering torches, Gerard was hung by his hands for hours, day after day. When he fainted, he was revived and the torture reapplied. His arms swelled monstrously, his whole body throbbed, his bones screamed, and his hands became so damaged he couldn’t even feed himself.

     The torture was finally suspended for a while. The young priest did finger exercises, and within three weeks he could again feed himself. Soon he asked for oranges and toothpicks. The toothpicks became pens. Orange juice became ink, visible only when heated. Messages flew back and forth. A rope, a boat, and outside helpers were recruited. On October 5, 1597 Gerard climbed through a hole to the roof of Cradle Tower, threw a rope over the side, and slid down it, wincing as it mutilated his hands. Friends whisked him to a hiding place outside London.

     He was soon back at his clandestine priestly work, always a mere step from recapture. Finally it became untenable for him to stay in England, and he sadly slipped out of the country in the retinue of the Spanish and Dutch ambassadors. He labored in Rome until July 27, 1637, when he passed away at age 73. He is known today as one of an elite handful of people who outwitted the Tower of London.

     Surrender your heart to God, turn to him in prayer, and give up your sins—even those you do in secret. Then you won’t be ashamed; you will be confident and fearless. Your troubles will go away like water beneath a bridge.
--- Job 11:13-16.

          Morning - October 5

     “He arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights.” --- 1 Kings 19:8.

     All the strength supplied to us by our gracious God is meant for service, not for wantonness or boasting. When the prophet Elijah found the cake baked on the coals, and the cruse of water placed at his head, as he lay under the juniper tree, he was no gentleman to be gratified with dainty fare that he might stretch himself at his ease; far otherwise, he was commissioned to go forty days and forty nights in the strength of it, journeying towards Horeb, the mount of God. When the Master invited the disciples to “Come and dine” with him, after the feast was concluded he said to Peter, “Feed my sheep”; further adding, “Follow me.” Even thus it is with us; we eat the bread of heaven, that we may expend our strength in the Master’s service. We come to the passover, and eat of the paschal lamb with loins girt, and staff in hand, so as to start off at once when we have satisfied our hunger. Some Christians are for living on Christ, but are not so anxious to live for Christ. Earth should be a preparation for heaven; and heaven is the place where saints feast most and work most. They sit down at the table of our Lord, and they serve him day and night in his temple. They eat of heavenly food and render perfect service. Believer, in the strength you daily gain from Christ labour for him. Some of us have yet to learn much concerning the design of our Lord in giving us his grace. We are not to retain the precious grains of truth as the Egyptian mummy held the wheat for ages, without giving it an opportunity to grow: we must sow it and water it. Why does the Lord send down the rain upon the thirsty earth, and give the genial sunshine? Is it not that these may all help the fruits of the earth to yield food for man? Even so the Lord feeds and refreshes our souls that we may afterwards use our renewed strength in the promotion of his glory.


          Evening - October 5

     “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” --- Mark 16:16.

     Mr. MacDonald asked the inhabitants of the island of St. Kilda how a man must be saved. An old man replied, “We shall be saved if we repent, and forsake our sins, and turn to God.” “Yes,” said a middle-aged female, “and with a true heart too.” “Aye,” rejoined a third, “and with prayer”; and, added a fourth, “It must be the prayer of the heart.” “And we must be diligent too,” said a fifth, “in keeping the commandments.” Thus, each having contributed his mite, feeling that a very decent creed had been made up, they all looked and listened for the preacher’s approbation, but they had aroused his deepest pity. The carnal mind always maps out for itself a way in which self can work and become great, but the Lord’s way is quite the reverse. Believing and being baptized are no matters of merit to be gloried in—they are so simple that boasting is excluded, and free grace bears the palm. It may be that the reader is unsaved—what is the reason? Do you think the way of salvation as laid down in the text to be dubious? How can that be when God has pledged his own word for its certainty? Do you think it too easy? Why, then, do you not attend to it? Its ease leaves those without excuse who neglect it. To believe is simply to trust, to depend, to rely upon Christ Jesus. To be baptized is to submit to the ordinance which our Lord fulfilled at Jordan, to which the converted ones submitted at Pentecost, to which the jailer yielded obedience the very night of his conversion. The outward sign saves not, but it sets forth to us our death, burial, and resurrection with Jesus, and, like the Lord’s Supper, is not to be neglected. Reader, do you believe in Jesus? Then, dear friend, dismiss your fears, you shall be saved. Are you still an unbeliever, then remember there is but one door, and if you will not enter by it you will perish in your sins.

          CHANNELS ONLY

     Mary E. Maxwell, 20th century

     If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work. (2 Timothy 2:21)

     A vessel He will make of you, if small or great, ’twill surely do—
     Great joy and peace will always fill the one who’s yielded to His will.
--- Unknown

     To be a channel of the purposes of God is the highest calling in life. Every believer has been given at least one spiritual gift for this work (1 Peter 4:10). When we use that gift, our own lives are blessed and enriched by God as we bless others. For instance, after a visit to a nursing home or an invalid person, we often come away spiritually rejuvenated. Ministering to the needs of others is one of the best remedies for self-centeredness and joyless living.

     Our ministry to others, however, is always based on what we have first received and experienced from God. We can never give out spiritual nourishment until we have first taken it in ourselves. Our experiences of suffering can be used to equip us to help others who suffer as we do. Difficulties can either make us bitter or they can fill us with a compassion and sensitivity for the hurts of others. People who are hurting can sense when we really understand and care for them in Christian love.

     Our Lord is seeking representatives who realize their insufficiencies but are willing to be a channel filled with His power and love. That’s the vessel He can use.

     How I praise Thee, precious Savior, that Thy love laid hold of me;
     Thou hast saved and cleansed and filled me that I might Thy channel be.

     Emptied that thou shouldest fill me, a clean vessel in Thy hand,
     with no pow’r but as Thou givest graciously with each command.

     Witnessing Thy pow’r to save me, setting free from self and sin,
     Thou who boughtest to possess me, in Thy fullness, Lord, come in.

     Jesus, fill now with Thy Spirit hearts that full surrender know,
     that the streams of living water from our inner man may flow.

     Chorus: Channels only, blessed Master—but with all Thy wondrous pow’r
     flowing thru us, thou canst use us ev’ry day and ev’ry hour.

     For Today: Romans 6:19; 2 Corinthians 4:1–7; Galatians 5:13; 2 Timothy 2:14–26; James 1:22

     Ask the Holy Spirit to show you your particular gift in channeling God’s love to others. Share an encouraging, comforting word with someone you know is hurting. Use this musical message to help ---

          DISCOURSE VIII - ON GOD’S KNOWLEDGE

     Psalm 147:5. —Great is our Lord, and of great power; his understanding is infinite. It is uncertain who was the author of this Psalm, and when it was penned; some think after the return from the Babylonish captivity. It is a Psalm of praise, and is made up of matter of praise from the beginning to the end: God’s benefits to the church, his providence over his creatures, and the essential excellency of his nature.

     The psalmist doubles his exhortation to praise God (ver. 1), “Praise ye the Lord, sing praise to our God;” to praise him from his dominion as “Lord,” from his grace and mere as “our God;” from the excellency of the duty itself, “it is good, it is comely:” some read it comely, some lovely, or desirable, from the various derivations of the word. Nothing doth so much delight a gracious soul, as an opportunity of celebrating the perfections and goodness of the Creator. The highest duties a creature can render to the Creator are pleasant and delightful in themselves; “it is comely.” Praise is a duty that affects the whole soul. The praise of God is a decent thing; the excellency of God’s nature deserves it, and the benefits of God’s grace requires it. It is comely when done as it ought to be, with the heart as well as with the voice; a sinner sings ill, though his voice be good; the soul in it is to be elevated above earthly things. The first matter of praise is God’s erecting and preserving his church (ver. 2): “The Lord doth build up Jerusalem, he gathers together the outcasts of Israel.” The walls of demolished Jerusalem are now re-edified; God hath brought back the captivity of Jacob, and reduced his people from their Babylonish exile, and those that were dispersed into strange regions, he hath restored to their habitations. Or, it may be prophetic of the calling of the Gentiles, and the gathering the outcasts of the spiritual Israel, that were before as without God in the world, and strangers to the covenant of promise. Let God be praised, but especially for building up his church, and gathering the Gentiles, before counted as outcasts (Isa. 11:12); he gathers them in this world to the faith, and hereafter to glory.

     Obs. 1. From the two first verses, observe: 1. All people are under God’s care; but he has a particular regard to his church. This is the signet on his hand, as a bracelet upon his arm; this is his garden which he delights to dress; if he prunes it, it is to purge it; if he digs about his vine, and wounds the branches, it is to make it beautiful with new clusters, and restore it to a fruitful vigor.

     2. All great deliverances are to be ascribed to God, as the principal Author, whosoever are the instruments. The Lord doth build up Jerusalem, he gathers together the outcasts of Israel. This great deliverance from Babylon is not to be ascribed to Cyrus or Darius, or the rest of our favorers; it is the Lord that doth it; we had his promise for it, we have now his performance. Let us not ascribe that which is the effect of his truth, only to the good will of men; it is God’s act, not by might, nor by power, nor by weapons of war, or strength of horses, but by the Spirit of the Lord. He sent prophets to comfort us while we were exiles; and now he hath stretched out his own arm to work our deliverance according to his word; blind man looks so much upon instruments, that he hardly takes notice of God, either in afflictions or mercies, and this is the cause that robs God of so much prayer and praise in the world. (ver. 3.) “He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.” He hath now restored those who had no hope but in his word; he hath dealt with them as a tender and skilful chirurgeon; he hath applied his curing plasters, and dropped in his sovereign balsams; he hath now furnished our fainting hearts with refreshing cordials, and comforted our wounds with strengthening ligatures. How gracious is God, that restores liberty to the captives, and righteousness to the penitent! Man’s misery is the fittest opportunity for God to make his in mercy illustrious in itself, and most welcome to the patient. He proceeds (ver. 4), wonder not that God calls together the outcasts, and singles them out from every corner for a return; why can he not do this, as well as tell the number of the stars, and call them all by their names? There are none of his people so despicable in the eye of man, but they are known and regarded by God; though they are clouded in the world, yet they are the stars of the world; and shall God number the inanimate stars in the heavens, and make no account of his living stars on the earth? No, wherever they are disperred, he will not forget them; however they are afflicted, he will not despise them; the stars are so numerous, that they are innumerable by man; some are visible and known by men; others lie more hid and undiscovered in a confused light, as those in the milky way; man cannot see one of them distinctly. God knows all his people. As he can do what is above the power of man to perform, so he understands what is above the skill of man to discover; shall man measure God by his scantiness? Proud man must not equal himself to God, nor cut God as short as his own line. He tells the number of the stars, and calls them all by their names. He hath them all in his list, as generals the names of their soldiers in their muster-roll, for they are his host, which he marshals in the heavens, as in Isaiah 40:26, where you have the like expression; he knows them more distinctly than man can know anything, and so distinctly, as to call “them all by their names.” He knows their names, that is, their natural offices, influences the different degrees of heat and light, their order and motion; and all of them, the least glimmering star, as well as the most glaring planet: this, man cannot do; “Tell the stars if thou be able to number them” (Gen. 15:5), saith God to Abraham, whom Josephus represents as a great astronomer: “Yea, they cannot be numbered” (Jer. 33:22); and the uncertainty of the opinions of men, evidenceth their ignorance of their number; some reckoning 1022; others 1025; others 1098; others 7000, beside those that by reason of their mixture of light with one another, cannot be distinctly discerned, and others perhaps so high, as not to be reached by the eye of man. To impose names on things, and names according to their natures, is both an argument of power and dominion, and of wisdom and understanding: from the imposition of names upon the creatures by Adam, the knowledge of Adam is generally concluded; and it was also a fruit of that dominion God allowed him over the creatures. Now he that numbers and names the stars that seem to lie confused among one another, as well as those that appear to us in an unclouded night, may well be supposed accurately to know his people, though lurking in secret caverns, and know those that are fit to be instruments of their deliverance; the one is as easy to him as the other; and the number of the one as distinctly known by him as the multitude of the other. “For great is our Lord, and of great power; his understanding is infinite” (ver. 5). He wants not knowledge to know the objects, nor power to affect his will concerning them. Of great power, יבכוח . Much power, plenteous in power; so the word רב , is rendered (ver. 5), יבחרד , a multitude of power, as well as a multitude of mercy; a power that exceeds all created power and understanding. His understanding is infinite. You may not imagine, how he can call all the stars by name, the multitude of the visible being so great, and the multitude of the invisible being greater; but you must know, that as God is Almighty, so he is omniscient; and as there is no end of his power, so no account can exactly be given of his understanding; his understanding is infinite, .איוממפד   ( There are about 10 billion galaxies in the observable universe! The number of stars in a galaxy varies, but assuming an average of 100 billion stars per galaxy means that there are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion trillion) stars in the observable universe!)

     No number or account of it; and so the same words are rendered, “a nation strong, and without number” (Joel 1:6): no end of his understanding: (Syriac) no measure, no bounds. His essence is infinite, and so is his power and understanding; and so vast is his knowledge, that we can no more comprehend it, than we can measure spaces that are without limits, or tell the minutes or hours of eternity. Who, then, can fathom that whereof there is no number, but which exceeds all, so that there is no searching of it out? He knows universals, he knows particulars: we must not take understanding here, as noting a faculty, but the use of the understanding in the knowledge of things, and the judgment, תגינח , in the consideration of them, and so it is often used. In the verse there is a description of God. 1. In his essence, “great is our Lord.” 2. In his power of “great power.” 3. In his knowledge, “his understanding is infinite:” his understanding is his eye, and his power is his arm. Of his infinite understanding I am to discourse.

     Doctrine. God hath an infinite knowledge and understanding. All knowledge. Omnipresence, which before we spake of, respects his essence; omniscience respects his understanding, according to our manner of conception. This is clear in Scripture; hence God is called a God of knowledge (1 Sam. 2:3), “the Lord is a God of knowledge,” (Heb.) knowledges, in the plural number, of all kind of knowledge; it is spoken there to quell man’s pride in his own reason and parts; what is the knowledge of man but a spark to the whole element of fire, a grain of dust, and worse than nothing, in comparison of the knowledge of God, as his essence is in comparison of the essence of God? All kind of knowledge. He knows what angels know, what man knows, and infinitely more; he knows himself, his own operations, all his creatures, the notions and thoughts of them; he is understanding above understanding, mind above mind, the mind of minds, the light of lights; this the Greek word, Θὲος, signifies in the etymology of it, of Θεῖσθαι, to see, to contemplate; and δαίμων of δαίω, scio. The names of God signify a nature, viewing and piercing all things; and the attribution of our senses to God in Scripture, as hearing and seeing, which are the senses whereby knowledge enters into us, signifies God’s knowledge.

     1. The notion of God’s knowledge of all things lies above the ruins of nature; it was not obliterated by the fall of man. It was necessary offending man was to know that he had a Creator whom he had injured, that he had a Judge to try and punish him; since God thought fit to keep up the world, it had been kept up to no purpose, had not this notion been continued alive in the minds of men; there would not have been any practice of his laws, no bar to the worst of crimes. If men had thought they had to deal with an ignorant Deity, there could be no practice of religion. Who would lift lap his eyes, or spread his hands towards heaven, if he imagined his devotion were directed to a God as blind as the heathens imagined fortune? To what boot would it be for them to make heaven and earth resound with their cries, if they had not thought God bad an eye to see them, and an ear to hear them? And indeed the very notion of a God at the first blush, speaks him a Being endued with understanding; no man can imagine a Creator void of one of the noblest perfections belonging to those creatures, that are the flower and cream of his works.

     2. Therefore all nations acknowledge this, as well as the existence and being of God. No nation but had their temples, particular ceremonies of worship, and presented their sacrifices, which they could not have been so vain as to do, without an acknowledgment of this attribute. This notion of God’s knowledge owed not its rise to tradition, but to natural implantation; it was born and grew up with every rational creature. Though the several nations and men of the world agreed not in one kind of deity, or in their sentiments of his nature or other perfections, some judging him clothed with a fine and pure body, others judging him an uncompounded spirit, some fixing him to a seat in the heavens, others owning his universal presence in all parts of the world; yet they all agreed in the universality of his knowledge, and their own consciences reflecting their crimes, unknown to any but themselves, would keep this notion in some vigor, whether they would or no. Now this being implanted in the minds of all men by nature, cannot be false, for nature imprints not in the minds of all men an assent to a falsity. Nature would not pervert the reason and minds of men. Universal notions of God are from original, not lapsed nature, and preserved in mankind in order to a restoration from a lapsed state. The heathens did acknowledge this: in all the solemn covenants, selemnized with oaths and the invocation of the name of God, this attribute was supposed. They confessed knowledge to be peculiar to the Deity; scientia deorum vita, saith Cicero.

     Some called him Νοῦς, mens, mind, pure understanding, without any note, ̓Επόπιης, the inspector of all. As they called him life, because he was the author of life, so they called him intellectus, because he was the author of all knowledge and understanding in his creatures; and one being asked, whether any man could be hid from God? Do, saith he, not so much as thinking. Some call him the eye of the world; and the Egyptians represented God by an eye on the top of a sceptre, because God is all eye, and can be ignorant of nothing.

     And the same nation made eyes and ears of the most excellent metals, consecrating them to God, and hanging them up in the midst of their temples, in signification of God’s seeing and hearing all things; hence they called God light, as well as the Scripture, because all things are visible to him.

     For the better understanding of this, we will enquire,
I. What kind of knowledge or understanding there is in God.
II. What God knows.
III. How God knows things.
IV. The proof that God knows all things.
V. The use of all to ourselves.

     I. What kind of understanding or knowledge there is in God. The knowledge of God in Scripture hath various names, according to the various relations or objects of it: in respect of present things, it is called knowledge or sight; in respect of things past, remembrance; in respect of things future, or to come, it is called foreknowledge, or prescience (1 Pet. 1:2); in regard of the universality of the objects, it is called omniscience; in regard to the simple understanding of things, it is called knowledge; in regard of acting and modelling the ways of acting, it is called wisdom and prudence (Eph. 1:8). He must have knowledge, otherwise he could not be wise; wisdom is the flower of knowledge, and knowledge is the root of wisdom. As to what this knowledge is, if we know what knowledge is in man, we may apprehend what it is in God, removing all imperfection from it, and ascribing to him the most eminent way of understanding; because we cannot comprehend God, but as he is pleased to condescend to us in his own ways of discovery, that is, under some way of similitude to his perfectest creatures, therefore we have a notion of God by his understanding and will; understanding, whereby he conceives and apprehends things; will, whereby he extends himself in acting according to his wisdom, and whereby he doth approve or disapprove; yet we must not measure his understanding by our own, or think it to be of so gross a temper as a created mind; that he hath eyes of flesh, or sees or knows as man sees (Job 10:4). We can no more measure his knowledge by ours than we can measure his essence by our essence. As he hath an incomprehensible essence, to which ours is but as a drop of a bucket, so he hath an incomprehensible knowledge, to which ours is but as a grain of dust, or mere darkness: his thoughts are above our thoughts, as the heavens are above the earth. The knowledge of God is variously divided by the schools, and acknowledged by all divines.

     1. A knowledge visionis et simplicis intelligentiæ; the one we may call a sight, the other an understanding; the one refers to sense, the other to the mind.

     (1.) A knowledge of vision or sight. Thus God knows himself and all things that really were, are, or shall be in time; all those things which he hath decreed to be, though they are not yet actually sprung up in the world, but lie couchant in their causes.

     (2.) A knowledge of intelligence or simple understanding. The object of this is not things that are in being, or that shall by any decree of God ever be existent in the world, but such things as are possible to be wrought by the power of God, though they shall never in the least peep up into being, but lie forever wrapt up in darkness and nothing. This also is a necessary knowledge to be allowed to God, because the object of this knowledge is necessary. The possibility of more creatures than ever were or shall be, is a conclusion that hath a necessary truth in it; as it is necessary that the power of God can produce more creatures, though it be not necessary that it should produce more creatures, so it is necessary that whatsoever the power of God can work, is possible to be. And as God knows this possibility, so he knows all the objects that are thus possible; and herein doth much consist the infiniteness of his knowledge, as shall be shown presently. These two kinds of knowledge differ; that of vision, is of things which God hath decreed to be, though they are not yet; that of intelligence is of things which never shall be; yet they may be, or are possible to be, if God please to will and order their being; one respects things that shall be, the other, things that may be, and are not repugnant to the nature of God to be. The knowledge of vision follows the act of God’s will, and supposeth an act of God’s will before, decreeing things to be. (If we could suppose any first or second in God’s decree, we might say God knew them as possible before he decreed them; he knew them as future, because he decreed them.) For without the will of God decreeing a thing to come to pass, God cannot know that it will infallibly come to pass. But the knowledge of intelligence stands without any act of his will, in order to the being of those things he knows; he knows possible things only in his power; he knows other things both in his power as able to effect them, and in his will, as determining the being of them; such knowledge we must grant to be in God, for there is such a kind of knowledge in man; for man doth not oft know and see what is before his eyes in this world, but he may have a conception of many more worlds, and many more creatures, which he knows are possible to the power of God.

     2. There is a speculative and practical knowledge in God.

     (1.) A speculative knowledge is, when the truth of a thing is known without a respect to any working or practical operation. The knowledge of things possible is in God only speculative, and some say God’s knowledge of himself is only speculative, because there is nothing for God to work in himself: and though he knows himself, yet this knowledge of himself doth not terminate there, but flowers into a love of himself, and delight in himself; yet this love of himself, and delight in himself, is not enough to make it a practical knowledge, because it is natural, and naturally and necessarily flows from the knowledge of himself and his own goodness: he cannot but love himself, and delight in himself, upon the knowledge of himself. But that which is properly practice, is where there is a dominion over the action, and it is wrought not naturally and necessarily, but in a way of freedom and counsel. As when we see a beautiful flower or other thing, there ariseth a delight in the mind; this no man will call practice, because it is a natural affection of the will, arising from the virtue of the object, without any consideration of the understanding in a practical manner by counselling, commanding,

     (2.) A practical knowledge: which tends to operation and practice, and is the principle of working about things that are known; as the knowledge an artificer hath in an art or mystery. This knowledge is in God: the knowledge he hath of the things he hath decreed, is such a kind of knowledge; for it terminates in the act of creation, which is not a natural and necessary act, as the loving himself, and delighting in himself is, but wholly free: for it was at his liberty whether he would create them or no; this is called discretion (Jer. 10:12): “He hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.” Such also is his knowledge of the things he hath created, and which are in being, for it terminates in the government of them for his own glorious ends. It is by this knowledge “the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down their dew” (Prov. 3:20). This is a knowledge whereby he knows the essence, qualities, and properties of what he creates and governs in order to his own glory, and the common good of the world over which he resides; so that speculative knowledge is God’s knowledge of himself and things possible; practical knowledge is his knowledge of his creatures and things governable; yet in some sort this practical knowledge is not only of things that are made, but of things which are possible, which God might make, though he will not: for as he knows that they can be created, so he knows how they are to be created, and how to be governed, though he never will create them. This is a practical knowledge for it is not requisite to constitute a knowledge practical, actually to act, but that the knowledge in itself be referable to action.

     3. There is a knowledge of approbation, as well as apprehension. This the Scripture often mentions. Words of understanding are used to signify the acts of affection. This knowledge adds to the simple act of the understanding, the complacency and pleasure of the will, and is improperly knowledge, because it belongs to the will, and not to the understanding; only it is radically in the understanding, because affection implies knowledge: men cannot approve of that which they are ignorant of. Thus knowledge is taken (Amos 3:2), “You only have I known of all the families of the earth”; and (2 Tim. 2:19), “The Lord knows who are his,” that is, he loves them; he doth not only know them, but acknowledges them for his own. It notes, not only an exact understanding, but a special care of them; and so is that to be understood (Gen. 1.), “God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good:” that is, he saw it with an eye of approbation, as well as apprehension. This is grounded upon God’s knowledge of vision, his sight of his creatures; for God doth not love or delight in anything but what is actually in being, or what he hath decreed to bring into being. On the contrary, also, when God doth not approve, he is said not to know (Matt. 25:12), “I know you not,” and (Matt. 7:23), “I never knew you;” he doth not approve of their works. It is not an ignorance of understanding, but an ignorance of will; for while he saith he never knew them, he testifies that he did know them, in rendering the reason of his disapproving them, because he knows all their works: so he knows them, and doth not know them in a different manner: he knows them so as to understand them, but he doth not know them so as to love them. We must, then, ascribe an universal knowledge to God. If we deny him a speculative knowledge, or knowledge of intelligence, we destroy his Deity, we make him ignorant of his own power: if we deny him practical knowledge, we deny ourselves to be his creatures; for, as his creatures, we are the fruits of this, his discretion, discovered in creation: if we deny his knowledge of vision, we deny his governing dominion. How can he exercise a sovereign and uncontrollable dominion, that is ignorant of the nature and qualities of the things he is to govern? If he had not knowledge he could make no revelation; he that knows not cannot dictate; we could then have no Scripture. To deny God knowledge, is to dash out the Scripture, and demolish the Deity. God is described in Zech. 3:9, “with seven eyes,” to show his perfect knowledge of all things, all occurrences in the world; and the cherubims, or whatsoever is meant by the wings, are described to be full of eyes, both “before and behind” (Ezek. 1:18), round about them; much more is God all eye, all ear, all understanding. The sun is a natural image of God; if the sun had an eye, it would see; if it had an understanding, it would know all visible things; it would see what it shines upon, and understand what it influenceth, in the most obscure bowels of the earth. Doth God excel his creature, the sun, in excellency and beauty, and not in light and understanding? certainly more than the sun excels an atom or grain of dust. We may yet make some representation of this knowledge of God by a lower thing, a picture, which seems to look upon every one, though there be never so great a multitude in the room where it hangs; no man can cast his eye upon it, but it seems to behold him in particular, and so exactly, as if there were none but him upon whom the eye of it were fixed; and every man finds the same cast of it: shall art frame a thing of that nature, and shall not the God of art and all knowledge, be much more in reality than that is in imagination? Shall not God have a far greater capacity to behold everything in the world, which is infinitely less to him than a wide room to a picture?

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Matthew 9:18-26
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