"Go and Tell Jesus"
by Octavius Winslow
At that time Herod the tetrarch heard
the reports about Jesus, and he said to his attendants, "This is John the
Baptist; he has risen from the dead! That is why miraculous powers are at
work in him."
Now Herod had arrested John and bound him and put him in
prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, for John had been
saying to him: "It is not lawful for you to have her." Herod wanted to kill
John, but he was afraid of the people, because they considered him a
prophet.
On Herod's birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for them
and pleased Herod so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever
she asked. Prompted by her mother, she said, "Give me here on a platter the
head of John the Baptist." The king was distressed, but because of his oaths
and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted and had John
beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to
the girl, who carried it to her mother. John's disciples came and took his
body and buried it. Then they went and told Jesus. Mt. 14:1-12
Outline
INTRODUCTION
GROUNDS OF COMMUNION
1. Who Jesus is
2. What Jesus does
3. Our sacred relationship
OCCASIONS OF COMMUNION
1. Burdened with sin
2. Backslidings
3. Walking in darkness
4. Temptation
5. Trials
6. Bereavement
7. Difficulties
8. Tell Jesus everything
BLESSINGS OF COMMUNION
1. Intimacy with Jesus
2. Strengthening of faith
3. Honoring Jesus
CONCLUSION
1. To the unbeliever
2. To the believer
As if to illustrate the nature and test the efficacy of
His great and gracious expedient of saving sinners, it pleased the redeeming
God that the first subject of death should be a believer in the Lord Jesus.
Scarcely had the righteous Abel laid his bleeding lamb upon the altar—that
altar and that lamb all expressive of the truth, and radiant with the glory
of the person and work of the coming Savior—before he was called to seal
with his blood the faith in Christ he had professed. But if the first
victim, he was also the first victor. He fell by death, but he fell a
conqueror of death. He lost the victory, but he won the battle. Thus was the
“last enemy” foiled in his very first assault upon our race. The point of
his lance was then turned, the venom of his sting was then impaired, and,
robbed of his prey, he saw in the pale and gory form his shaft had laid low
the first one of that glorious race of confessors, that “noble army of
martyrs,” who in all succeeding ages should overcome sin, hell, and death,
by the blood of the Lamb.
It was on an occasion similar to the death of the first martyr, that the
passage suggesting the subject of these pages was written. Falling a
sacrifice to his fidelity, as Abel had to his faith, John was now a mangled
corpse—the victim of Herod’s sin and cruelty. Taking up the headless body of
their master, the disciples of John bore it to the tomb, and then went and
poured their tale of woe into the ear, and laid their crushing sorrow upon
the heart of Jesus. “And his disciples came and took up the body and buried
it, AND WENT AND TOLD JESUS.” It was, perhaps, their first direct
communication with the Savior. They had known but little of Jesus until now.
Another being had engaged their interest, and occupied their thoughts.
Absorbed in their admiration of the star that heralded its approach, they
had scarcely caught sight of the Sun which had just appeared above the
horizon. In vain had John, with characteristic lowliness, reminded those who
he was not the Messiah, and but His forerunner. Wedded to their master, they
thought of, clung to, and loved only him. John must therefore die—the star
paling and disappearing before the deepening splendor of the divine
ascending Orb. All this was the ordering of infinite wisdom and love. The
removal of John was necessary to make his disciples better acquainted with
Jesus. They had heard of Him, had seen Him, and in a measure believed in
Him; but they never fully knew or loved Him until now that profound grief
brought them to His feet. What a Divine Savior, what a loving Friend, what a
sympathizing Brother Jesus was! How truly human in His affinities,
compassionate in His heart, gentle in His spirit! They had no adequate
conception until the surge of sorrow flung them upon His sympathy. Ah! How
they clung to Jesus now! Owning no other master, seeking no other friend,
repairing to no other asylum in their lonely grief, “they went and told
Jesus.” Favored disciples! Honored men! Oh! How many now hymning their
praises in heaven, or still watering their couch with tears on earth, will
alike testify that until God smote the earthly idol, or broke the human
staff, or dried up the creature spring, JESUS was to them as an unknown
Savior and Friend. Blessed, thrice blessed sorrow that leads us to Jesus!
That sorrow—dark, deep, though it be—will wake the harp of the glorified to
heaven’s sweetest melody. The bitterest grief of the saint on earth will
issue in the sweetest joy of the glorified in heaven—because that grief,
sanctified by the Spirit, brought the heart into a closer alliance and
sympathy with Him who was emphatically a “man of sorrows and acquainted with
grief”
We know so much of divine truth, my reader, as we have in a measure a
personal experience of it in our souls. The mere speculatist and notionalist
in religion is as unsatisfactory and unprofitable as the mere theorist and
declaimer in science. For all practical purposes both are but ciphers. The
character and the degree of our spiritual knowledge begins and terminates in
our knowledge of Christ. Christ is the test of its reality, the measure of
its depth, and the source of its growth. If you are advancing in an
experimental, sanctifying acquaintance with the Lord Jesus, you are
advancing in that knowledge which Paul thus estimates: “I count all things
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord.” Dear
reader, let the chief object of your study be to know the Lord Jesus. It may
be in the region of your sinfulness, emptiness, weakness, and foolishness
that you learn Him—nevertheless, however humiliating the school, slow the
progress, and limited the attainment, count every fresh step you make in a
personal acquaintance with the Lord Jesus as a nobler triumph, and as
bringing you into the possession of more real wealth than were the whole
chests of human knowledge and science mastered, and its untold treasures
poured at your feet. When adversity comes—when death approaches—when
eternity unveils—oh!—how indescribably valuable, how inconceivably precious
will then be one faith’s touch, one faith’s glimpse of a crucified and risen
Savior! All other attainments then vanish, and the only knowledge that
abides, soothes, and comforts, is a heartfelt acquaintance with the most
sublime fact of the Gospel, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners.” Oh! Whatever other studies may engage your thoughts, forget not,
as you value your eternal destiny, to study the Lord Jesus Christ.
Communion with Jesus
The subject which we must keep prominent before us is: Communion with
Jesus. That there may exist a serious defect in the experience of many
Christians touching this point, we solemnly believe. There is in the walk of
many so wide a chasm between Jesus and their personal and confidential
fellowship, as to leave upon the mind the conviction that they have no
dealings with Jesus at all! Hence the distressing doubts, the timid fears,
the obscure evidences, the beclouded hopes, that shade the luster, impair
the vigor, and render dubious the religion of so many. The secret is, they
have so little to do with Jesus! And, as a natural result, Jesus, in the
bestowment of His favors, in the manifestations of Himself, in the
breathings of His love, has so little to do with them! Oh! How sad, that
such distance and coldness should ever exist between Christ and a soul
redeemed with His most precious blood! What an evidence of the fallen
condition of our humanity, and of its but partial sanctification, even in
its renewed state.
We propose, in the further unfolding of this interesting subject, to state
the grounds upon which the believer is warranted to go and tell Jesus—the
occasions on which he is privileged to go and tell Jesus—and the blessings
that will flow from his going and telling Jesus.
The first springs from what Jesus is Himself. The very fact that He whom we
approach—the Being, the Savior, the Friend with whom this close and constant
communion is maintained—is JESUS, forms our highest encouragement, our
divinest warrant. It is not every great person who is at all times
accessible. The official barriers which surround, or the austere address
which marks him, may interdict and discourage all free and confidential
approach. It is not so with Jesus. Infinitely great though He is—for He is
the Maker of all beings and worlds—there is not a being in the universe so
accessible as Jesus. We approach Him, and we find Him—sin only excepted—a
being just like ourselves. His divine nature is clad with the human—His
circumstances are human—His love is human—His sympathy is human—His
compassion is human—His smile is human— His trials, temptations, sufferings,
and sorrows, are human; all are so human that there is not a petition with
which we approach, growing out of our suffering humanity, that challenges
not a hearing, that awakens not a response. Let us add a few particulars. Do
we go to Him burdened?—we are in the presence of Him who bore the mighty
weight of sin. Do we go to Him in sorrow?—we are in the presence of Him who
was acquainted with grief. Do we go to Him in temptation?—we are in the
presence of Him who was tempted in all points like as we are. Carry we to
His feet our adversities, poverty, need?—we are holding audience with Him
who, when He sojourned on earth, was poor, homeless, and unbefriended—who
subsisted by charity, and had not where to lay His head. And, then, there is
another encouragement to our approach growing out of His official
relations—they are all in our favor. His prophetical office—His
priesthood—His royal character, all have a relation to our varied need.
Exalted as His position is, each separate office that He fills warrants and
invites our approach. And, as if to crown the encouragements accumulating
around our access to Jesus, there are His own personal
attractions—all-inviting and irresistible. Everything in the person of Jesus
encourages our advance. Does glory charm us—does beauty attract us—does love
win us—does gentleness subdue us—does sympathy soothe us—does faithfulness
inspire confidence?—then, all this is in Jesus, and all invites us to draw
near. He is the “altogether lovely,” and if our minds can appreciate the
grand, and our hearts are sensible of the tender; if they feel the power of
that which is superlatively great and exquisitely lovely, then we shall need
no persuasion to arise, and go and tell Jesus every emotion of our souls,
and every circumstance of our history. Take all that is tender in love—all
that is faithful in friendship—all that is wise in counsel—all that is
longsuffering in patience, all that is balmy, soothing, and healing in the
deepest sympathy—and its embodiment, its impersonation is—JESUS. Can we,
then, be insensible to all this personal attraction, and hesitate repairing
to His feet—telling Him all? In addition to what Jesus is in Himself, there
is the encouragement to repair to Him growing out of the covenant relations
He sustains to His people. Apart from His ever-loving heart, kindly
disposition, and sympathizing nature, Jesus is your Brother, your Friend,
your redeemer. As a Brother, He knows the need of His brethren in adversity;
as a Friend, He shows Himself friendly; and as next of redeemer, He has
redeemed your soul, and bought back your lapsed inheritance. No, more, He is
your Advocate in heaven, your Intercessor at the right hand of God, your
Representative, having ascended up on high to take possession of heaven on
your behalf, and to prepare a place for you. Upon His heart He wears your
name—a precious pearl in the priestly breastplate. And there is not a moment
of time, nor an event of life, nor a circumstance of daily history, nor a
mental or spiritual emotion, in which you are not borne upon the love, and
remembered in the ceaseless intercession of Christ. Is not this enough? What
more, to win you to His feet in all the endearing confidence of one who
delights in everything, to go and tell Jesus? Is there another being in the
universe you can approach with such perfect repose of mind, with such full
assurance of heart, with an unveiling of every thought, emotion, and
feeling, so full, unreserved, and confiding? No! Not one!
His Mediatorial Work
The mediatorial work of the Lord Jesus constitutes another and assured
ground of our approach. The full, complete, and free salvation which He by
His obedience and death has accomplished for sinners, anticipates every
objection, and answers every argument growing out of our personal and deep
unworthiness. Nothing can withstand this plea. When we enter into His
presence—be it as a sinner confessing guilt—be it as a penitent supplicating
pardon—be it as a mourner unveiling sorrow—be it as needy asking grace—or,
be it as a recipient of mercy offering the sacrifice of praise—we stand upon
the basis of an Atonement which meets our case in its most peculiar form. It
is utterly impossible that we can be repulsed. We approach Jesus by Jesus!
We “take hold of His strength,” and a rejection of our suit must involve a
rejection of Himself. We draw near by the way of His cross. We penetrate
into His loving heart through His pierced side. His wounds are our “door of
hope.” We plead His own merits—bathe in His own blood—enfold us in His own
righteousness—and the one name that breathes from our lips in its purest
fragrance and sweetest music is, His own!—that “name which is above every
name.” Can He deny us? Will He reject us? Impossible! How shall we more
strongly put the case? What more can we add to annihilate all your doubt and
fear touching your reception, if you but arise and come to Jesus? Tell me
after this statement—justified and borne out by every sentence of revealed
truth—who shall dare interpose or come between your soul and Christ? What
echoes of the “law’s loud thunder,” what lightning gleams of justice, what
profound sense of sinfulness, what aggravated departures, shall presume to
interdict your approach to the Savior! The Cross of Calvary clasped within
the arms of faith, you may challenge the universe to forbid your approach to
Jesus—every foe shall turn pale and shrink away. No sin, no curse, no Satan
can stand beneath the sacred, solemn shadow of that cross where—impaled,
suffering, dying —hung the incarnate God. Sooner at the bidding of a mortal
shall the laws of nature stand still, and this universe cease to be; sooner
shall Christ vacate His throne of glory, and God resign the government of
all worlds and of all beings, than shall a poor penitent, humble,
supplicating soul enter into the presence of Jesus, pleading His own
infinite merits and most precious blood, be chilled by coldness, be awed by
a frown, or be rejected with disdain. Once more, believing reader, would we
remind you that Jesus your Surety Head has done all for you, and has left
you nothing to do but go and tell Him all. He has paid all your great debt,
annihilated all your innumerable sins, exhausted every particle of your
tremendous curse, and is now set down at the right hand of God to secure by
His intercession, and to administer by His government, the untold blessings
purchased by His blood—can you then hesitate and demur? Approach Him, and
with the gentlest pressure of faith, touch the spring of His heart’s love,
and every door flies open to welcome you.
The Divine Relationship
In addition to all this, we have to blend the thought of the close and
sacred relationship which binds you to Jesus, on the ground of which you are
emboldened to approach and tell Him all. As a believer, you are one of the
countless number given by the Father to Jesus. You are one of His sheep, His
brother, His friend. To receive you with indifference, or to repulse you
with scorn, would be to trample upon Himself—for we are as His brethren,
“bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh.” In us, too, He beholds His
Father’s image restored, His own righteousness imputed, and our bodies
living temples of the Holy Spirit. When the eye of King Ahasuerus lighted
upon Esther, robed and jeweled with royal splendor, her person found grace
in his sight, and he bade her approach. With a complacency and delight
infinitely transcending this, does Jesus contemplate the believer as he
enters into the Divine presence, lovely with His loveliness put upon him.
Extending the symbol of welcome, He invites your approach; His heart,
responsive to your petition, is prepared, and His power, commensurate with
your case, is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or
think.” O royal highway of access! Opened by the blood and kept open by the
intercession of Christ, the much incense of whose merit ascends up moment by
moment before the throne—there is not a thought, a feeling, or a
circumstance, with which you may not go and tell Jesus.
Just as I am—Your love unknown
Has broken every barrier down,
Now to be Your, yes, Your alone,
O Lamb of God! I come!
Let me remind you, in vindication of the glory of Immanuel, that going and
telling Jesus, implies on His part, no ignorance of, or indifference to your
case. He who redeemed us is GOD—“God manifest in the flesh.” All people, all
things, all events are known to Him from the end to the beginning. When,
therefore, you stand in the presence chamber of Jesus you offer no request,
breathe into His ear no sorrow, unveil to His eye no infirmity, with which,
in all its most minute detail, He was not already infinitely better
acquainted than yourself. Long before the sadness had shaded your brow, or a
tear had dimmed your eye, or the burden had pressed your spirit, or the
perplexity had woven its web around your path, or the archer had bent his
bow and winged his shaft—Jesus knew it all, had appointed it all, had
anticipated it all. It was no surprise to Him! Precious truth! Christ had
entwined my perplexity with His thoughts, had wrapped my grief around His
heart, had provided a pavilion for my safety before a pebble had paved, or a
cloud had shaded, or a whisper of the storm had breathed over my path. “O
Lord! You know my downsitting and mine uprising; You understand my thoughts
afar off, You compass my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all
my ways.” Satisfied with such a fact, cheered by such a truth, animated by
such a thought, you may unhesitatingly advance into the unknown history of
another year; firm in the belief that Jesus will be faithful in fulfilling
the promise, “I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will
lead them in paths that they have not known; I will make darkness light
before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them,
and not forsake them.”
Let me now briefly trace a few of the many occasions in
which you are invited to avail yourself of this privilege.
Is Sin a Burden?
Are you burdened with a sense of sin? Go and tell Jesus. There is no burden
that mortal ever bore like this! Do you feel this weight? Then there is
spiritual sensibility, a holy consciousness, a divine life in your soul.
This is not the mark of an unconverted nature. The corpse recoils not from
its own corruption, nor is the rock sensible of its own weight. You feel
yourself a sinner, your spirit is contrite for sin, your heart is broken for
sin, your whole soul is bowed in the dust of self-abhorrence for sin. Then,
my reader, there is life, spiritual, divine, deathless life in your soul;
and you are just the one to go and tell Jesus. To whom can you repair with
that burden, to whom confess that sin, to whom unveil that guilt but—JESUS?
As a sinner you need a Savior—Jesus is your Savior. As guilty, you desire to
know how God can pardon, justify, and accept you—Jesus, “the brightness of
the Father’s glory, and the express image of His person,” is prepared to
reconcile you to God, and thus bring you into perfect peace. “Being
justified by faith we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Appointed by God, Jesus is the infinite burden-bearer of our race. “Surely
He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our
transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.” That burden you feel
Jesus bore, for that sin you mourn Jesus suffered, for that iniquity you
acknowledge Jesus bled—for that guilt, beneath which you tremble, Jesus
died. Go, then, and tell Jesus all your sin. To whom can you tell it but to
Him? He “came into the world to save sinners.” “Christ died for the
ungodly.” His “blood cleanses from all sin.” His “name is JESUS because He
saves.” To Him confess all your sin. Beneath His cross, watering His feet
with tears of penitence, acknowledge your transgressions—unveil your every
sin. He knows it all, yet would have you tell Him all; withholding, veiling,
extenuating nothing. Only go and tell Jesus what a sinner you are, and that
you are emboldened thus to come because He has revealed Himself as such a
Savior; that it is His pardoning mercy—His boundless love—His gracious
invitation—His tender, compassionate heart, that never yet rejected a
seeking sinner, that warrants your coming, that draws and woos you to His
feet. Oh! If instead of brooding over your unworthiness, magnifying your
sins, and lessening His most free grace to sinners, you will but arise and
go and tell Jesus, the song of the pardoned would soon burst in the sweetest
melody from your lips. Only go to Jesus—
With all your sins against your God,
All your sins against His laws,
All your sins against His blood,
All your sins against His cause—
Sins as boundless as the sea!
And hide them in Gethsemane!
Are You Going Back?
Go and tell Jesus your backslidings. “My people are bent to backsliding
from Me,” is the mournful language of God. “Our backslidings are many,” is
the penitential acknowledgment of the Church. Backsliding, as the simple
definition of the word intimates, is a going back. “They have gone backward
and not forward,” says the Lord. How constantly do we recede in the ways of
the Lord Jesus. And if, through restraining grace, there are no outbreaks of
sin, there yet may be the secret declension of the soul, the hidden
backsliding of the heart, all concealed from human eye, yet “open to the eye
of Him with whom we have to do.” Oh! How little vital religion, how little
of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, of the power of real godliness, is
there in the souls of many who yet at the Lord’s table solemnly profess
themselves His!
Perhaps, my reader, you are awakened to a sense of your
backsliding from the Lord. Startled by the discovery, alarmed at the
symptoms, deploring the consequences, you exclaim: “Oh! That it were with me
as in days that are passed, when the candle of the Lord shone round about
me.” You think of the “love of your espousals”; of your “song in the days of
your youth, in the day when you came up out of the land of Egypt”; of the
“green pastures and the still waters,” and your heart dies within you. Be it
so—be it that you have wandered far from God, and that you have fallen by
your iniquity; that you have pierced afresh the bosom of that Savior that
has so often pillowed your head in weakness and grief; yet, go and tell
Jesus! There is not in the universe a being who can so understand and
sympathize with your case as He. Tell Him how your affections have
strayed—how your love has chilled—how the spirit of prayer has waned in your
soul, and what ascendancy the world, the creature, and self have obtained in
your mind. Take with you words and turn to the Lord, say unto Him: “Take
away all iniquity, and receive us graciously.”
In this connection of our remarks, we would venture upon an observation
which relates closely to the happy and holy walk of the child of God. How
many a believer in Jesus pursues his Christian course with a sad
countenance, the reflection of a yet sadder heart, from the consciousness of
the indwelling evil of his nature perpetually exhibiting itself in flaws,
and failure, and dereliction, to which the eye of human affection is blind,
but which to his own inspection are real, palpable and aggravated—not the
less humiliating and abhorrent because unknown and unsuspected by all but
himself. The remedy, what is it? Going and telling Jesus! Oh! If there be
one view of this privilege more precious, endearing, and sacred than
another, it is the liberty of admitting Jesus to the deepest confidence of
the heart, of unveiling to Him thoughts, imaginations, and emotions, which
no inducement could persuade us to reveal to our most dear and intimate
friend. Bending beneath the cross, the eye reposing in faith upon the
Crucified, there is no heart-wandering, no mental emotion, no secret so
profound, no sorrow so delicate, no perplexity so great, no guilt so
aggravated which the lowly, penitent heart may not fully and freely tell
Jesus. It is the oversight of this truth that produces so much solitary
grief in the minds of many of the Lord’s people. They forget what a Friend,
what a Brother, what a Confidant, what a Savior they have in Jesus. They
refuse to go and tell Him all; and thus, brooding over their failures and
sins, nursing in loneliness their trials and sorrows, their “sore runs in
the night, and their soul refuses to be comforted.”
Are You Walking in Darkness?
As a child of the light walking in darkness—go and tell Jesus. The path of
the believer, though it be the only sunny path in life, is often shaded and
dreary. There are spiritual despondencies and mental depressions peculiar to
the divine life of a Christian. If the “Sun of Righteousness” had His
periods of obscuration, His temporary eclipse when His whole soul was
enshrouded in deep gloom, it is no great marvel that along a similar shaded
path His disciples should travel. The cloud that envelops you may be so
dense as to obscure every star, and to extinguish every ray. You cannot see
Jesus, you cannot descry a single promise upon which you can rest your soul,
not a word of Jesus from which you can extract comfort or gather hope. All
means fail, and every spring of consolation is dried, and you have no
evidence of your interest in the Savior, of your adoption into His family,
of your title to glory—and you exclaim: “My God! My Father! Why have You
forsaken me?” But, hush that murmur! God has not forsaken you. “O Israel!
You shall not be forgotten of Me,” is His assuring declaration. What is your
course? Go and tell Jesus! If in the universe there is one who can
sympathize with this spiritual darkness it is He. Turn in faith to the full
sunshine of this Divine Orb. In Christ’s light you shall see light upon all
the hidden riches and glory of the kingdom of God within you. Sinful though
you are, your soul, renewed and inhabited by the Holy Spirit, presents the
pencilings and enshrines the gems of a Divine Artist, the beauty, grandeur,
and costliness of which are hidden until Jesus shines upon it. It is the
light flowing from the Sun of Righteousness that alone can make manifest the
work of the Holy Spirit in our souls. This is one mode by which the Spirit
“bears witness with our spirit that we are the sons of God.” He reveals
Jesus to the believer. Opening, as it were, the casement, uplifting the
window, He admits the light that streams from a Divine Sun, and the soul
thus illumined, unveils the wealth, and sparkles with the glories that are
garnered there—the restored image of God, and the precious, costly,
imperishable graces of the Holy Spirit. Go, then, my reader, and tell Jesus
the darkness that broods around you, and that conceals all this glory. Ask
Him to arise upon your soul with healing on His wings. One ray darting from
that Sun—and how soon will that long, dreary, “night of weeping” be
succeeded by the bright “morning of joy.” “He that follows Me,” says the
Savior, “shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
Are You Tempted?
I will suppose you, my reader, to be a tempted soul—for temptation is an
essential element in the spiritual discipline of the child of God. “There
has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man." “Though now for a
season, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations.”
Through this furnace, more or less heated, all the followers of Jesus
pass—they could not be like Him were it not so. He was tempted like as we
are, that He might know how to sympathize with us, and we are tempted that
we might fly to the asylum of that sympathy. Perhaps you are tempted to
distrust God—to question the Savior’s love to you—to oppose the divine
will—to fret, and murmur, and repine at the dealings of your Heavenly
Father—to doubt the truth of the Bible, to look upon your professed
Christianity as a fiction, and upon all your past experience as a lie. Poor
tempted soul, what are you to do? Where repair? Already you are prepared to
succumb to the foe. You have no heart to resist, no skill to fence, no power
to vanquish. Satan is too subtle, experienced, and vigilant in this war to
be easily foiled or soon overcome. Already your wounded conscience,
confidence, and peace, testify to the perseverance and precision with which
his “fiery darts” have been winged. Where, then, will you look? Go and tell
Jesus. To whom can you more fitly repair for succor in temptation than to
the tempted One? Lay all your case before Him. Tell Him how your faith
trembles, how your courage fails, how your heart dies within you, and how
ready you are to cast away your confidence, and to part with the anchor of
your hope. Oh! Methinks, that in a moment—the scene of His own long, weary
temptation in the wilderness still vivid in His remembrance—He will open
every recess of His loving, gracious, sympathizing heart, and draw you
within the blest pavilion until the storm be past. Tempted ones are
peculiarly precious to Jesus. It is His own temptation over again, in the
people of His members. And if there be a niche in His heart deeper, warmer,
or more sacred than another, it is where He hides and shelters His Satan and
sin-tempted disciples.
Are You Tried?
Go and tell Jesus your trials. To whom, as a tried Christian, but to Jesus
can you go? Oppressed and sorrowful as our humanity is, there is lacking in
each and all the tender, disciplined feeling that exactly harmonizes with
our own chastened and pensive spirit. We take our sorrow even to a sorrowing
believer, and we find his heart so charged with his own personal trial, his
mind so perplexed with his own anxieties, or his spirit so bowed under its
own concealed dejection, that we shrink from adding one drop to his brimmed
cup by pouring into his sad heart the sadness of our own. He is silent of
his own grief, but that silence, oh, how expressive!
But there is One to whom you may go, whose sorrows now are all over, and
who is prepared to make yours His own. You are tried in your spirit—tried in
your principles—tried in your faith—tried in your worldly calling—tried in
your spiritual history—tried in your domestic circumstances—tried in those
near and dear to you—where, son, daughter of trial, can you turn but to
Jesus? Have you pondered this sacred and precious privilege? Has it ever
bethought you to arise in your grief and go and tell Jesus? He was, as you
are, a child of sorrow—a man of grief. Smitten, wounded, traduced, belied,
foully accused, bruised, and heartbroken—and is fitted, as no other being in
the universe is, to listen to the story of your trial, succor, soothe, and
sanctify it.
Are You Bereaved?
These pages will, doubtless, find their way within the home of the
bereaved. We refer to this sorrow with the most profound awe—we touch it
with a shrinking hand. It seems almost too sacred for human sympathy to
approach. But there is One, and only one, who can approach it; One, and only
one, who can enter into and understand it; One, and only one, who can soothe
it. It is Jesus! Contemplate Him in the bereaved home of Bethany! Martha and
Mary are mourners. Lazarus their brother is dead. Jesus, their brother’s
Friend and theirs, is come—but He has come too late! “Lord, if You had been
here, my brother had not died.” No! Not too late! It was just the moment
that Jesus should come. He timed His visit of sympathy and help with their
grief and need. Beloved, Jesus never approaches you a moment sooner, or a
moment later than your case demands. He will come—but it will be at the very
instant that you most need Him. There shall be more than an angel’s chime of
His sympathy with your sorrow—the most perfect and exquisite blending. If He
come a moment too soon, your grief would not be matured enough for His
sympathy; if a moment too late, that grief might have crushed you. Now, mark
the thoughtfulness and skill, the delicacy and sympathy of Jesus. All is
inscribed in one brief but expressive sentence: “JESUS WEPT!” To this
weeping Jesus go! You return to the house of mourning from the grave where
repose the ashes of one once animated and glowing with a spirit that blended
with your own—you seem to have entombed a second self—all that gave
existence an object, or life its charm. But rise, and go to Jesus. Tell Him
what a wreck your heart is, what a blank life seems, and what wintry gloom
enshrouds all the landscape of human existence. Tell Him how mysterious to
your view seems the event—how heavy falls the blow—what hard, dark,
rebellious thoughts of God now haunt your perturbed mind. Lay your grief
upon Jesus’ breast. Think not that you are alone in your sorrow—that there
is not one in this wide, wide world, one who can appreciate your loss, or
enter into all the peculiar features of your afflictions, the delicate
shadings of your sadness; Jesus can, and Jesus only. The vacancy, too, death
has made, in your love and friendship, whatever be the relation, Jesus can
fill. Ah! There is not a relation, many and varied though they are, both of
domestic and social life, which the Son of God has not assumed, so that when
these human ties are sundered by death, Jesus stands prepared to reknit,
replace, and restore them, by Himself occupying the vacancy. In the rupture
of the parental bond, He is a Father; of the filial, He is a Son; of the
conjugal, He is a Husband; of the fraternal, He is a Brother; of friendship,
He is Friend. Thus, in every condition of human life, whatever the
peculiarity of its bond, the specialty of its sorrow, or the desolation it
produces, Jesus avows His aptitude and readiness to meet and sympathize with
it. Go, then, bereaved mourner, and present your claim to a newborn
relation, it may be, to the Incarnate Son of God.
Are You in a Strait?
It is possible that you are entangled within the meshes of a present
difficulty, to the unravelment of which no clue presents itself, and from
which there appears no way of escape. Human ingenuity is baffled, creature
strength fails, all earthly means are exhausted, and you are at your wits’
end. Behold your remedy, how near, how simple—go and tell Jesus. Take your
difficulty and spread it before the Lord. Your appeal to His compassion, and
your believing reliance upon His promise, will secure on your behalf
infinite wisdom and omnipotent strength. Listen to the divine declaration,
simple faith in which will raise you above your circumstances: “Behold, I am
the Lord, the God of all flesh: is anything too hard for Me?” Then, what is
your present entanglement, great though it be, to Him, “with whom nothing is
impossible”? In a moment, and by a way transcending all your thoughts and
conceptions, He can “pluck your feet out of the net,” and bring you into a
“large place where there is no straitness.” Pore not despairingly over your
obstacles, faint not under your adversity, sit not down, stunned and
paralyzed, upon the stone of difficulty, asking, “Who will roll it
away?”—here is your effectual remedy, adopt it in faith and you shall be
delivered—go and tell Jesus. Enlist Him on your side, retain Him as your
Counselor, honor Him by committing your case to His skill, power, and
willingness, and He will guide you through all the intricacies of your
position, making the rough path smooth, and the crooked path straight. Jesus
has power to rescue you from all your entanglements. He can level the
mountain, lift up the valley, roll aside the rock, and clear your way to an
equitable, honorable, and happy adjustment of all your worldly difficulties.
Only make use of Him. Only honor Him. Only confide in Him. Only call upon
Him. All hearts are in His hand, all resources are at His command, all
agencies are at His disposal; nothing is impossible with Jesus but to deny
Himself—this He cannot do. Then, “be anxious for nothing, but in everything
by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made
known unto God.”
Tell Jesus Everything
What more shall we say? We will sum up all in a few words—Go and tell Jesus
everything. You have much to disclose—tell Him all. Tell Him of the world’s
woundings, of the saints’ smitings, of the spirit’s tremblings, and of the
heart’s anguish. Tell Him your low frames, your mental despondencies, your
gloomy fears, beclouded evidences and veiled hope. Tell Him your bodily
infirmities—your waning health, failing vigor, progressive disease—the pain,
the lassitude, the nervousness, the weary couch, the sleepless pillow, which
no one knows but Him. Tell Him of your dread of death, how you recoil from
dying, and how dark and rayless appears the body’s last resting place. Tell
Him how all beyond it looks so dreary, starless, hopeless. Tell Him you fear
you do not know Him, love Him, believe in Him. Tell Him that there is not a
being in the universe—none in heaven or on earth— whom you desire as
Himself. Tell Him all the temptations, the difficulties, the hidden trials
and sorrows of your path. Tell—oh!—tell Him all! There is nothing that you
may not in the confidence of love, and in the simplicity of faith, tell
Jesus—no temporal need—no spiritual sorrow. “Casting all your care upon Him,
for He cares for you.” “You people, pour out your heart before Him!” Tell
Him your desolateness as a widow—your friendlessness as an orphan—your
sadness and solitude as one whose heart is overwhelmed within you. Go, and
lose yourself in the love of Jesus—hide in the wounds of Jesus—wash in the
blood of Jesus—replenish from the fullness of Jesus, and recline upon the
bosom of Jesus. Think not this a weak, sentimental Christianity to which we
are urging you. We know no other than this—no other which so appeals to the
intellect, as to the most sacred feelings and affections of the heart. This
telling Jesus everything in our individual history—this recognition of His
government in all our ways, and this reliance upon His power and love in all
our circumstances—is the legitimate employment of a faith at once the most
sublime exercise of the mind as it is the loveliest and holiest impulse of
the heart. Here is a faith that recedes from the objects of sense, and
“beholds Him that is invisible”; that leaves the region of illusions and
shadows, and entwines itself with infinite realities; that carries all the
interests and relations, responsibilities and accountabilities of time into
the solemn, awful, and unalterable decision of eternity. In urging you,
Christian reader, to the exercise of a privilege of personal contact and
close transaction with Jesus, we have but endeavored to simplify a
principle, in its application to all the minutiae of life, the divinest,
loftiest, and most sublime that can possibly task the powers of the human
soul. All the splendor of human philosophy, science, and prowess, pales
before the moral grandeur which gathers, like a halo, around a mortal man
reposing at the feet of the Incarnate God—unveiling his whole soul in all
the childlike confidence of a faith that grasps Jehovah. At this focal point
must meet the profound philosopher and the untutored peasant; the matured
man and the little child—all taught, counseled, and supplied at the feet of
Jesus.
It only remains that we briefly glance at the
sanctifying influence this operation of faith must naturally exert.
Intimacy with Christ
The first result to which we refer is, the close intimacy with Christ which
the habit cultivates. Human society will illustrate this. It is close
dealings with our fellow beings that removes ignorance, dissolves prejudice,
and unseals in our hearts the hidden springs of confidence, affection, and
sympathy. How many of the Lord’s people stand aloof from each other’s
society simply from not knowing one another. Did believers in the Lord Jesus
more frequently meet in council, in service, in communion, how soon and
entirely would the coldness, the party spirit; the jealousies, the erroneous
impressions vanish which now, alas! divide the body of Christ, all whose
members are “members one of another.” Knowing each other better, they would
love each other more; and loving each other more, there would be more ready
concession made to the freedom of judgment and the claims of conscience. The
clergy of the various sections of the Christian Church stand too wide apart
from each other simply because they do not know each other. And if the
shepherds are thus sundered, it is no marvel that the sheep are divided! The
Church of Christ is essentially one, why should she not be visibly one?
Inseparable from Christ, why should we be separated from each other? With an
essential unity of faith, why should we not all unite in excluding
uncharitableness? Oh! If the Lord’s people—losing sight of every badge but
Christian, and of every name but Christ—were to mingle more frequently,
confidingly, and prayerfully together, how much more would they find of
assimilation, of sympathy, and affection—how much less to sunder, separate,
and censure, and how much more to admire, love, and imitate in each other
than they had any conception of. “I believe in the communion of
saints”—would then be, not a cold, heartless, unbelieving acknowledgment of
a creed, but the sincere, glowing avowal of a fact! Apply this to our
communion with Jesus. It would be impossible for us to cultivate the habit
of telling Him every sin, every sorrow, every temptation, every trial, in a
word, every incident of every hour of our daily history, and not increase in
a knowledge of Christ. We would then “grow up into Christ in all things.”
The flower absorbs the light, the heat, the air, the dew, and so maintains
its vitality, unfolds its beauty, and breathes its fragrance. It is by a
similar absorption of Christ into our souls that we grow, becoming vigorous,
holy, and fruitful. “He that dwells in Me and I in him, brings forth much
fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” Oh! How endeared will Christ
become, and God our Father in Him, by this habit of going and telling Jesus
everything. The more frequently we go to Jesus the more intimately we shall
know Him; and the more intimately we know Him, the more ardently shall we
love, self-denyingly serve, and closely resemble Him. Oh! How close,
confiding, and endearing will your intimacy become by this habit of going
and telling Him everything! How will His glory, loveliness, and excellence
unfold to your admiring eye. Day by day, and hour by hour, each exigency of
its history will reveal stronger reason why you should admire, love, trust,
and glorify Christ. Language cannot describe how growingly precious He will
become to your soul; how more intensely your heart’s affections will clasp
and firmly entwine around Him, your whole soul striving day by day to please
and glorify Him here, longing to be with Him that you might see and enjoy
Him hereafter forever.
The Strengthening of Faith
This habit, too, will greatly tend to the nourishing and strengthening of
faith. It is faith that takes us to Jesus, and each fresh act of faith
invigorates the divine principle. Faith, taking everything to Christ, and
bringing back everything from Christ, by this process “grows exceedingly.”
Would you, my reader, have a faith powerful and stalwart, a faith that can
slay the vaunting foe with a pebble and a sling, that demurs not at
probabilities or impossibilities, because it leans upon Him with whom all
things are possible, then you must have close transactions with Jesus, the
“Author and Finisher of your faith.” The eaglet’s eye acquires strength of
vision by gazing upon the sun—thus will your eye of faith be strengthened by
“looking unto Jesus,” the “Sun of Righteousness,” in everything, and for
everything. This habit of continuous application to the Lord Jesus will keep
your heart as an evergreen, planted by streams of water. The springs of its
devotion will be kept pure and flowing; its affections fresh and ascending.
My reader, true godliness has its empire in the heart. As a man’s heart is,
so is he. The heart is the moral mainspring of the soul—it regulates and
governs the whole man. Oh! Watch with sleepless vigilance, with the most
prayerful interest, the power of godliness in your heart. Let other
religious professors, if they will, split hairs and solve abstract problems
in theology. Let them speculate and refine, spending their energies and time
in upraising but the scaffolding of the building—let the religion of others
more consist in frivolous conversation, heartless levity, and unholy gossip
about preachers and preaching, churches and societies—criticizing,
fault-finding, condemning—with you, my Christian reader, let the one, grand,
momentous, absorbing matter be—the religion of God in your soul—the making
sure work for eternity. A mere religious professor may talk about ministers
and churches, and parishes, and societies all his life, and be lost forever!
Alas! Alas! It is with a mournful and solemn conviction of its truth we pen
it—the religion of thousands, and of tens of thousands, has no more
spiritual vitality than this! Why is it that in the professing Church of God
there is so much vain conversation, idle, worldly gossip—so much
evil-speaking and backbiting—so much censoriousness, suspicion, and
condemning? Alas! It is because there exists so little real, Christlike
godliness in those who profess it. Why is it that there is so little of the
meekness and gentleness of Christ, of the spirit of charity, kindness, and
forbearance—the taking the low place—the refusal to join others in hurling
the missile, in uncovering the infirmity, and in inflaming the wound of a
Christian brother or sister? Alas! It is because multitudes who, though
professing His name, have no close, heart-transactions with Jesus. The more
closely you deal with Christ, the more faithfully you will deal with
yourself, and the less inclination and time you will have to deal with
others. You will feel that to “save yourself,” were a matter sufficiently
momentous to absorb every feeling, and thought, and moment; and that, having
made sure of this, all the time and energy and sympathy you have to spare
would find its appropriate work in endeavoring to “save others.” How is it,
then, with you, my reader? Is that kingdom of Jesus, which “comes not with
observation,” which “consists not in foods and in drinks, but in
righteousness, joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit,” dwelling, advancing,
ascending in you? Are you a living soul—enshrining a living Christ—yielding
in your life the fruit of a living faith, and cherishing a living hope of
life eternal? What present transactions have you with Jesus—in your closet,
by the wayside, in your families, and amid the din and conflict of your
worldly calling? This will be the test and gauge of the reality and depth of
your Christianity—your personal dealings with Christ.
Honoring Jesus
The crowning blessing accruing from this sacred privilege is—the praise,
honor, and glory it will bring to Jesus. To secure this as its end were
worth embarking in any labor, with any self-denial, and at any cost. To
plant one gem in His crown—to blend one note in the anthem of His praise—to
add one beam to the sun of His glory—oh!—ten thousand lives spent, ten
thousand deaths endured, were as nothing! Conceive, if it be possible, what
a continuous revenue of glory is accruing to Jesus from your constant habit
of conferring with Him—communing with Him—drawing from Him in all the minute
concerns of daily life. Each occasion that you repair to confess at His
cross—to draw from His fullness—to lay your grief upon His sympathy—to
confide in His counsel—to repose in His love, and to spread around you the
adamant shield of His power, you place a fresh diadem upon His head—that
head that will before long appear in the clouds of heaven, wearing and
radiant with His “many crowns.”
Live in the constant expectation of soon seeing Him face to face—conversing
with whom here below, cheered, beguiled, and sweetened many a weary step of
your Christian pilgrimage. That moment is speeding on. In a little while and
all that now wounds and ruffles, tempts and pollutes, will have disappeared
like the foam upon the billow, and you shall eternally repose your weary
soul in the bosom of Jesus.
A little while to wear the robe of sadness,
To walk with weary feet through thorny ways,
Then to pour forth the fragrant oil of gladness,
And clasp the girdle round the robe of praise.
Are you reader, entering upon the New Year still unconverted? Oh! We
beseech you, begin it with contrition, confession, and prayer at the Cross.
Dare not to add another year of impenitence, unbelief, and sin to the many
which have gone before to judgment. Seek the “washing of regeneration,”
which is, “the renewing of the Holy Spirit,” without which you cannot enter
into the kingdom of glory. Seek it with all your heart, and seek it NOW.
Forward, believer in Christ, to the toils, duties, and trials of another
stage of life’s journey! Christ is enough for them all, and Christ will be
with you in them all, and Christ will triumphantly conduct you through them
all. Begin your year—telling Jesus; continue it—telling Jesus; close
it—telling Jesus. Imitate the early Christians, who, at the termination of
their day of labor, “gathered themselves unto Jesus, and told Him all
things, both what they had done, and what they had taught.” Tell Jesus you
have no grace but what He communicates—no strength but what He gives—no love
but what He inspires—no sympathy but what He vouchsafes. Then will come His
sweet and instant response: “Do you hang upon Me, My loved disciple, for
all? Then all benediction shall be yours, and yours forever!”
One word before we close. Do not dishonor the Lord by repairing to human
counsel and sympathy first, and that failing, then betake yourself to Him.
Many Christians are ruled by this principle of making Christ secondary and
subordinate to the creature, greatly to their own loss and His discredit.
But in all things, in all teaching, in all service, in all obedience, yes,
in all your ways, give Jesus the preeminence. He asks it—expects it—and is
most worthy of it. Go and tell Jesus first. Make Him your confidant before
the creature. The bereaved disciples betook themselves to no mere human
sympathy. They went sad and lonely from the grave of their Master to the
bosom of their Lord, and buried their sorrow in His loving, sympathizing
heart. Imitate their Christ-honoring example. Before you take counsel of
man, or ask sympathy of friendship—before you confer and communicate with
the dearest and nearest earthly friend—go and tell Jesus. Thus confiding in
Him, He will return your confidence a thousand-fold. Pleased with your
dependence, honored by your trust, and moved by your appeal, He will
graciously respond: “You are My servant, I have chosen you, and not cast you
away; fear you not; for I am with you: be not dismayed, for I am your God. I
will strengthen you: yes, I will help you; yes, I will uphold you with the
right hand of My righteousness.” Enough! My gracious Lord! Enough! Arise, my
soul! Go and Tell Jesus!
O Lord! How happy is the time,
When in Your love I rest;
When from my weariness I climb
Even to Your tender breast.
The night of sorrow ends there,
Your rays outshine the sun;
And in Your pardon, and Your care,
The heaven of heavens is won.
Let the world call itself my
foe,
Or let the world allure;
I care not for the world—I go
To this tried Friend and sure.
And when life’s fiercest storms
are sent
Upon life’s wildest sea,
My little bark is confident,
Because it holds by Thee.
When the law threatens endless
death,
Upon the dreadful hill,
Straightway from its consuming breath
My soul mounts higher still;
She hastes to Jesus, wounded, slain,
And finds in Him her home,
Where she shall not go forth again,
And where no death can come.
I do not fear the wilderness,
Where You have been before;
No! Rather would I daily press
After You, near You, more!
You are my strength, on You I
lean,
My heart You make sing;
And to Your pastures green at length
Your chosen flock will bring.
And if the gate that opens there
Be closed to other men,
It is not closed to those who share
The heart of Jesus then.
That is not losing much of life,
Which is not losing You,
Who are as present in the strife,
As in the victory!
Therefore, how happy is the
time,
When in Your love I rest,
When from my weariness I climb,
Even to Your tender breast.
The night of sorrow ends there,
Your rays outshine the sun,
And in Your pardon and Your care,
The heaven of heavens is won!
(from the German of Dresler)