THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
“A light to lighten the Gentiles.”
—Luke ii. 25-40.
HAT was the wonder of wonders. Hitherto the light had been supposed to be for Israel alone; and now a heavenly splendour was to fall upon the Gentiles. Hitherto the light had been thought of as a lamp, illuming a single place; now it was to be a sun, shedding its glory upon a world. The “people that sat in darkness” are now to see “a great light.” New regions are to be occupied; there is to be daybreak everywhere! “The Sun of Righteousness is arisen, with healing in His wings.”
“To lighten the Gentiles!” And thus the heavenly beams have come to thee and me, to Europe and America, and to all the nations of the earth. The amazing privilege is our personal inheritance. We are born to glorious rights in Christ Jesus. But a wealthy heir may neglect this inheritance. We may have the light and neglect our garden. We may have all the favours of a blessed clime, and yet our life may be like a wilderness. The Gentiles may have the light, and may yet be children of the darkness. It is ours to believe in the light that our lives may become “light in the Lord.”
DECEMBER The Twentieth
THE COMING OF THE LORD
John i. 1-14.
Y Lord came as “the word.” He came as the expression of the mind of the eternal God. Ordinary words could not have carried the “good news.” Ordinary language was an altogether inadequate vessel for this new wine. And so the mighty news was spoken in the incarnation of the Lord.
My Lord came as “life.” “In Him was life.” But not a mere cupful of life, or even a cup running over. He came as “the fountain of life.” Nay, if I had the requisite word I must get even behind and beyond this. For He was the Creator of fountains. “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well.” Yes, He was the fountain of fountains!
The Lord came as “light.” “The life was the light.” True light is always the child of life. Our clearest light comes not from speech or doctrine, still less does it emerge from controversy. It is the fine, subtle issue of fine living. And my light is to “shine before men” by reason of the indwelling life of the Christ.
And my Lord came as “power.” “To them gave He power.” All the power I need for a full, holy, healthy life I can find in Him. Every obligation has its corresponding inspiration, and I am competent to do His will.
DECEMBER The Twenty-first
THE LORD OF WORKING MEN
Luke ii. 8-20.
ND so the good news was told to shepherds, to working men who were toiling in the fields. The coming King would hallow the common work of man, and in His love and grace all the problems of labour would find a solution.
The Lord of the Christmas-tide throws a halo over common toil. Even Christian people have not all learnt the significance of the angels’ visit to the lonely shepherds. Some of us can see the light resting upon a bishop’s crosier, but we cannot see the radiance on the ordinary shepherd’s staff. We can discern the hallowedness of a priest’s vocation, but we see no sanctity in the calling of the grocer, or of the scavenger in the street. We can see the nimbus on the few, but not on the crowd; on the unusual, but not upon the commonplace. But the very birth-hour of Christianity irradiated the humble doings of humble people. When the angels went to the shepherds, common work was encircled with an immortal crown.
And it is in the Lord Jesus that all labour troubles are to be put to rest. If we work from any other centre we shall arrive at confusion confounded. “I have the keys.”
DECEMBER The Twenty-second
THE LORD OF THE WORSHIPPER
Luke ii. 25-35.
ND so the good news was taken to the worshipper bowing within the gates of the Temple. The soul of old Simeon was filled with holy satisfaction and peace. The cravings of the heart were quieted, and its desires found the coveted feast in the holy Child of God.
And thus the Lord Jesus was not only to dignify the body but to gratify the soul. He was to be most efficient where He was most needed. And this has been the unfailing experience of the years. There is a hunger in my soul for which I can find no satisfying bread. I have tried many breads; I have tried nature, and art, and music, and literature, and I have tried human fellowship and social service. But my soul is hungry still! And the Lord Jesus comes to me, as I reverently grope in the vast temple, and He “satisfies the hungry soul” with good things. His “bread of life” is very wonderful; it lifts the soul into the restfulness of strength, and gives me a strange buoyancy, and “the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
“My soul, wait thou only on Him!” He is thy hope, thy strength, and thy salvation! He is “the desire of all the nations.”
DECEMBER The Twenty-third
THE LORD OF THE STUDENTS
Matthew ii. 1-12.
ND so the good news came to “wise men,” shall we say to students, busying themselves with the vast and intricate problems of the mind. And the evangel offered the students mental satisfaction, bringing the interpreting clue, beaming upon them with the guiding ray which would lead them into perfect noon.
Yes, our wise men must find the key of wisdom in the Lord. In a wider sense than the meaning of the original word it is true that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” To seek mental satisfactions and leave out Jesus is like trying to make a garden and leave out the sun. “Without Me ye can do nothing,” not even in the unravelling of the problems which beset and besiege the mind.
If my mental pilgrimage is to be as “a shining light shining more and more even unto perfect day,” I must begin with Jesus, and pay homage to His Kingly and incomparable glory. I must lay my treasures at His feet, “gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.” Then will He lead me “into all truth,” and “the truth shall make me free.”
DECEMBER The Twenty-fourth
ENTERING IN AT LOWLY DOORS
“Unto us a Child is born.”
—Isaiah ix. 1-7.
OW gentle the coming! Who would have had sufficient daring of imagination to conceive that God Almighty would have appeared among men as a little child? We should have conceived something sensational, phenomenal, catastrophic, appalling! The most awful of the natural elements would have formed His retinue, and men would be chilled and frozen with fear. But He came as a little child. The great God “emptied Himself”; He let in the light as our eyes were able to bear it.
“Unto us a Son is given.” And that is the superlative gift! The love that bestows such gift is all-complete and gracious. And the Son is given in order that we may all be born into sonship. It is the Son’s ministry to make sons. “Now are we the sons of God,” and we are of His creation.
Dismiss me not, I pray.”
DECEMBER The Twenty-fifth
CHRISTMAS CHEER
“Good will toward men!”
—Luke ii. 8-20.
HE heavens are not filled with hostility. The sky does not express a frown. When I look up I do not contemplate a face of brass, but the face of infinite good will. Yet when I was a child, many a picture has made me think of God as suspicious, inhumanly watchful, always looking round the corner to catch me at the fall. That “eye,” placed in the sky of many a picture, and placed there to represent God, filled my heart with a chilling fear. That God was to me a magnified policeman, watching for wrong-doers, and ever ready for the infliction of punishment. It was all a frightful perversion of the gracious teaching of Jesus.
Heaven overflows with good will toward men! Our God not only wishes good, He wills it! “He gave His only begotten Son,” as the sacred expression of His infinite good will. He has good will toward thee and me, and mine and thine. Let that holy thought make our Christmas cheer.
DECEMBER The Twenty-sixth
DAYBREAK IN THE SOUL
Isaiah ix. 1-7.
T is a lonely and a chilling experience to sit in the darkness. And the gloom and the cold are all the more intense when there is death in the house. In such conditions we are in great need of light and fire.
And that is how the children of men were feeling before the Saviour came. They “sat in darkness” and in “the shadow of death.” The world was cold, and sin and death were in it, and they longed for light and cheer. And “the great Light came,” and His wonderful Presence not only illumines the house but banishes the fear of sin and death. “They that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”
Where can we get this living light except in the Lord Jesus Christ? Everything else is candle-light! It fails us in the midnight. It flickers amid conflicting currents. It goes out in the rough blast. The light of art and of literature fails me when I need them most. When I sit in the darkness, with death in the house, these kindly ministers have no effective beams. I turn to the Master, and He shines upon me, and it is daybreak in the soul!
DECEMBER The Twenty-seventh
THE SUNNY SIDE OF THINGS
1 John i. 1-7.
HAVE just come out of a gloomy room into a sunny room to write these words. I had my choice. I could have stayed in the sombre room, but I choose to come into the sun-lit room and the warm, cheering beams are even now falling upon my page. “Walk in the light!” And I make my choice, and how often I choose to walk without Christ in the unfertilizing and unfruitful gloom of self-will! In the light of the Lord I could have a garden of Eden; how often I choose the dingy wilderness where I can grow neither flowers nor fruits.
“Walk in the light.” The Lord’s companionship always makes the sunny side of the street. It may be that the way is rough and stony and difficult, but in His company there is light that never fails, compared with which the world’s noontide is only as the gloomiest night. And the souls that “walk in the light” gather “sacred sweets” all along the way. Heavenly fruits grow for the children of light, fruits of love and joy and peace, and the favoured pilgrim plucks them as he goes along. “All I find in Jesus.” The way of light is the way of delight, and “the joy of the Lord is our strength.”
DECEMBER The Twenty-eighth
IN HIM WAS LIFE
John i. 1-18.
HAVE heard men speak of “wanting to see a bit of life,” and I found that what they meant was to see a bit of death. It is as if a man should go to the hospital to see a bit of health, or as if he should go to a gory battlefield to see the human frame. It is like going to a refuse-heap to see a bit of garden. Life is not found in fields of license; it is not found among the wild oats of a dissipated youth. Life is found only in Christ, and if we want to see a bit of life we must go to Him.
“In Him was life”; and that not merely to be looked at but to be shared. He is the well to which everybody can bring his pitcher, and take it away filled. And my pitcher is just my need. “All the fitness He requires is to feel our need of Him.” The Life is all-sufficient for the needs of the race. This Life can vitalize all that is withered and dead; it can make decrepit wills muscular and mighty, and it can transfigure the leper with the glow and purity of perfect health.
Freely let me take of Thee.”
DECEMBER The Twenty-ninth
THE LOVE OF GOD
1 John iv. 7-14.
ET me more assiduously think of God’s love. Let me sit down to it. In the National Gallery can be seen two sorts of people. There are the mere vagrants, who are always “on the move,” passing from picture to picture, without seeing any. And there are the students, who sit down, and contemplate, and meditate, and appropriate, and saturate. And there are vagrants in respect to the love of the Lord. They have a passing glimpse, but the impression is not vital and vitalizing, and there are the students, who are always gazing, and who are continually crying, “O the depth of the riches of the love of God in Christ!” “His riches are unsearchable!”
And God’s love is the creator of my love. “While I muse the fire burns.” I am kindled into the same holy passion. That is to say, contemplation determines character. We acquire the hues of the things to which we cling. To hold fellowship with love is to become loveful and lovely. “We love because He first loved us.”
And then, in the third place, it is through my love that I know my Lord. “Everyone that loveth knoweth God.” Love is the lens through which I discern the secret things of God.
DECEMBER The Thirtieth
THE BLESSEDNESS OF FORGIVENESS
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven.”
—Psalm xxxii.
T is the blessedness of emancipation. The boat which has been tethered to the weird, baleful shore is set free, and sails toward the glories of the morning. The man, long cramped in the dark, imprisoning pit, is brought out, and stretches his limbs in the sweet light and air of God’s free world. Black servitude is ended; glorious liberty begins.
It is the blessedness of education. For when we are freed we are by no means perfected. We are liberated babes; and our Emancipator does not desert us in our spiritual infancy. The foundling is not abandoned. “Having loved His own He loved them unto the end.” He begins with us in the spiritual nursery, and He will train and lead and feed us until we are “perfect in Christ Jesus.”
Therefore is it the blessedness of exultation. The babe is resting on the bosom of the Lord, and “the joy of the Lord is his strength.” It is not my emancipation that ensures my joy; it is the abiding Presence of the Emancipator.
DECEMBER The Thirty-first
THE REAR-GUARD
“Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
”
—Psalm xxiii.
UT why “follow” me? Why not “go before”? Because some of my enemies are in the rear; they attack me from behind. There are foes in my yesterdays which can give me fatal wounds. They can stab me in the back! If I could only get away from the past! Its guilt dogs my steps. Its sins are ever at my heels. I have turned my face toward the Lord, but my yesterdays pursue me like a relentless hound! So I have an enemy in the rear.
But, blessed be His name, my mighty God is in the rear as well as my foe. “Goodness and mercy shall follow me!” No hound can break through that defence. Between me and my guilt there is the infinite love of the Lord. The loving Lord will not permit my past to destroy my soul. I may sorrow for my past, but my very sorrow shall be a minister of moral and spiritual health. My Lord is Lord of the past as well as of the morrow, and so to-day “I will trust and not be afraid.”
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