now that God is love because we perceive that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. I. We want a Saviour. We are conscious of sin and of its penalty resting upon us. To use the significant word of Jesus, we are "lost." We are lost to God, to self-respect, to character, to usefulness, to eternal life. We are not so lost, however, as not to be salvable. No doctrine of total depravity can be true which does not recognize our consciousness of a lingering spark of hope and the possibility of better things. It is said that lost children in the Pyrenees are always sought for by their parents on the heights. They intuitively take the upward paths. So we look unto the hills, from whence cometh our help. Our instinct is to call upon God. We climb the steep pathway of repentance until we come to the vision of the Cross; and there we discover the truth of those wonderful words in the parable of the Prodigal Son: "When he was yet a great way off his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” II. We want a Lord and Master; one who shall direct, control and defend us in the front of temptation and duty. We look toward the future as Moses did toward the forty years in the wilderness, crying, "O Lord, show me thy way!" He answered, "My presence shall go with thee." with thee." It is the very word of Jesus, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end." And that should amply satisfy us. So on I go, not knowing; I would not if I might; I'd rather go in the dark with God I'd rather walk with him by faith III. We want a Comforter in trouble. And here again the glory of the divine goodness is revealed in Christ, who is "a strength to the poor and to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm and a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall." Pain, sorrow, bereavement, disappointment, discouragement are the allotment of human life. The essential glory of God affords no comfort in our somber hours. "Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" cried Job. He did find him at length and exclaimed, "I know that my Redeemer liveth!" Then all was well with him. Paul was able and willing to bear his thorn in the flesh when Christ said, "My grace is sufficient for thee." Mary and Martha were reconciled to their sorrow when the messenger came to say, "The Master is come and calleth for thee." IV. We want a Helper in the swellings of Jordan. The test of our religion is at the death-bed. John Wesley said to his brother Charles, "Our people die well." You will scarcely find a sublimer portion of Scripture than the death-song of Moses as he climbed the heights: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God! Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it." We may not go as Moses did along the upward path to vanish in the heavens; but as we pass through the Valley of the Shadow the rod and staff of our Helper will comfort us. V. And we need an Advocate to plead for us on the great day. Alas for those who appear in Judgment with their sins unshriven! Of these the merciful Master said, "They shall call upon the rocks and the hills to fall upon them and hide them from the face of him that sitteth on the throne." But blessed is the man who has committed himself to the divine goodness as manifest in Christ who died for us. He has gone on before, through the rent veil, into the Holiest of All, where he awaits us; and at our coming he will say, "Fear not; I am he that liveth and was dead!" So we journey through life, like Oriental pilgrims who come to their destination at nightfall to find the gates closed until the day break. Then the gates roll back, and they pass in. We conclude that the longing to know God and behold his glory is satisfied in the vision of his goodness in Christ. So far as we are concerned, the divine glory is fully revealed in the cross of his beloved Son. And that this was what Moses saw and really desired to see is made clear by what occurred fifteen hundred years later, in the Mount of Transfiguration, where he reappeared and spake with Jesus "of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." He had spent the intervening period in heaven, where it would seem that the divine glory in the atonement had thus impressed itself upon him. But this vision of Christ, that is of God's glory in his goodness, is possible only to those who, like Moses in the boldness of devout meekness, are willing to hide themselves in the cleft of the rock and permit God's hand to cover them. This was the thought of Augustus Toplady when he borrowed the symbolism of Moses' vision for his historic hymn. As a young man, oppressed with the burden of sin and remorse, while on a journey in Ireland he came at evening to a barn where a group of peasants were engaged in worship. He paused in the doorway and heard the testimony of the preacher to the saving power of Christ. That was the hour of Toplady's surrender to Christ, which he commemorated in these words: Rock of Ages, cleft for me! From thy riven side which flowed, Cleanse me from its guilt and power. While I draw this fleeting breath, 8. PRAYER O God, if it be not possible for eyes like mine to gaze undazzled on thy full majesty, grant me a glimpse, though it be but a momentary glimpse, of thyself as thou hast tempered thy glory in the person of thy Son. Oh, to see Christ, my Saviour, the fulness of the Godhead bodily! And oh, to see him now! Grant it for thy Name's sake. Amen. 9. HYMN: "Awake, my soul, to joyful lays." 10. BENEDICTION The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you. Amen. |