<BrethrenVoice> <SUNDAY-GLEANINGS> <1 September 2002> Contents: --------- (1) <Devotional> "Treasury of David - Psalm 84:4" - C.H.Spurgeon (2) <Bible-Study> "Exposition of the Levitical offerings" (Pt-4)-C.E.Wigg (3) <Doctrinal> "Instrumental music in worship" (Pt-3) - C.H.Brown (4) <Bible-Study> "The dignity of Christ" - F.B. Meyer (5) <Biography> "Dwight Lyman Moody" (6) <Hymn> "Fellowship with Christ's suffering" - J.Berridge (1) <DEVOTIONAL> TREASURY OF DAVID - PSALM 84:4 C. H. Spurgeon Ver. 4. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house. Those he esteems to be highly favoured who are constantly engaged in divine worship-the canons residentiary, yea, the pew openers, the menials who sweep and dust. To come and go is refreshing, but to abide in the place of prayer must be heaven below. To be the guests of God, enjoying the hospitalities of heaven, set apart for holy work, screened from a noisy world, and familiar with sacred things-why this is surely the choicest heritage a son of man can possess. They will be still praising thee. So near to God, their very life must be adoration. Surely their hearts and tongues never cease from magnifying the Lord. We fear David here drew rather a picture of what should be than of what is; for those occupied daily with the offices needful for public worship are not always among the most devout; on the contrary, "the nearer the church the further from God." Yet in a spiritual sense this is most true, for those children of God who in spirit abide even in his house, are also ever full of the praises of God. Communion is the mother of adoration. They fail to praise the Lord who wander far from him, but those who dwell in him are always magnifying him. Selah. In such an occupation as this we might be content to remain for ever. It is worth while to pause and meditate upon the prospect of dwelling with God and praising him throughout eternity. _______________________________________________________________________ (2) <BIBLE-STUDY> THE BREAD OF GOD - AN EXPOSITION OF SOME OF THE LEVITICAL OFFERINGS (PART-4) Charles E. Wigg .... As we come back now to Leviticus chapter one, we see in verse two that there could be offerings of different sizes. It could be a bullock from the herd, or a lamb or goat, from the flock, and in verse 14 we are told that it could be two turtle doves, or two young pigeons, the smallest offering. This should be of great encouragement to us, for provision is made so that the poorest of God's people could bring an offering. There is no difference in the worth or acceptability of the offering to God, the difference is only in it's size, and in the wealth of the offerer. The bullock is a large and costly offering, and represents a large and rich appreciation of Christ. It is the kind of offering that would be brought by one who had cultivated his inheritance, and had consequently grown rich. In New Testament times, it would be a contribution in worship of one who has "sown to the Spirit", who has walked with God, who has lived a clean and honest life. One who has read and meditated in the word of God over a long period, and is able to present a rich and choice appreciation of Christ in their worship of God. One who is able to draw from the scriptures the rich and beautiful language that describes the person of Christ. When such take audible part in the meetings in the assembly for worship and remembrance, then others will be moved, edified, and challenged to go deeper into the word of God for themselves. The lamb or goat, is a smaller, less costly sacrifice. One may not to use the rich language and beautiful expressions of worship, or the appreciation of the Father, the person of Christ, or the Holy Spirit that an older and more experienced, more mature believer can. But such are not discouraged from taking part in audible worship because of this. God in his love has made provision so that everyone of his redeemed people can bring an offering. I fact God had to rebuke his people through Isaiah, saying, "Thou hast not brought to me the small cattle of thy burnt offerings, neither hast thou glorified me with thy sacrifices," (Isaiah 43;23.) This teaches us that one is never to think or to say, that because one is not able to pray or to worship as well as another person, then one will not pray or worship audibly at all. God wants us all to bring our burnt-offering, he wants to hear our appreciation of Christ, what we have composed touching the King, (Ps.45;1.) The difference in the offerings was only in their size, not in their value to God. All are equally acceptable to him. The two turtle doves, or young pigeons are the smallest offering, and represent what a young believer might bring. He may not be able to present an offering of praise of the same quality that an older, more experienced and mature believer can, but however small, his offering of thanksgiving and praise glorifies God, and brings joy to the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sweet savour of the offering was just the same, Psalm 8;2 says "Out of the mouths of babes and suckling hast thou established praise. " The Lord Jesus quoted this verse to silence the Pharisees when they were angry about the children praising him in the temple, (Mat. 21;16.) [To be concluded] --- [Reproduced with permission of Charles E. Wigg] _______________________________________________________________________ (3) <DOCTRINAL> INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IN CHRISTIAN WORSHIP AND TESTIMONY (PART-3) C. H. Brown Christianity in contrast to Judaism ------------------------------------ We are firmly persuaded that the acceptance of musical instruments in Christian worship and testimony is basically due to the failure of believers to recognize the distinction between the two economies of law and of grace. One of the most remarkable statements of our Lord when here upon earth is found in the end of the fifth chapter of Luke's gospel. "No man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better." Luke 5:37-39. What an arresting statement this is! What would our Lord have us learn from this homely allegory? We believe it is simply this: Judaism and Christianity do not mix; they are mutually exclusive. To attempt to unite them is to lose completely the significance of either. The system of Judaism stemmed from a promise made to Abram when still in the land of Ur of the Chaldees. "I will make of thee a great nation ... and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." Gen. 12:2, 3. Later God renews His promise in the words, "I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it." Gen. 15:7. Again God meets Abram when the latter is ninety-nine years of age, changes his name to Abraham, and reiterates His promise to him in these words: "I will give unto thee and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession." Gen. 17:8. The reader is asked to note carefully the three promises above cited. Not one word is said about heaven, nor about the life to come. All is connected with this earth, especially a part of it called "Canaan," and the promises are entirely in view of temporal prosperity here below. [To be concluded] _______________________________________________________________________ (4) <BIOGRAPHY> DWIGHT LYMAN MOODY - 1837-1899 American evangelist Dwight L. Moody was born in Northfield, Massachusetts. His father died when Dwight was four years of age. He left school at the age of seventeen to find work. Moody was led to Christ by his Sunday School teacher, Edward Kimble, and later began his own Sunday School class with thirteen street urchins. The class increased its enrolment to fifteen hundred in a period of four years. Moody did personal work with the soldiers during the Civil War. After the war, he built churches and schools and started the Moody Bible Institute. He travelled in Europe and America holding campaigns and personally dealt with over seven hundred and fifty thousand individuals. He preached to more than one hundred million people and had over one million first-time conversions to Jesus Christ. One of the most blessed quotes of D.L. Moody is reproduced below: "Some day you will read in the papers that D.L. Moody of East Northfield is dead. Don't you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now; I shall have gone up higher, that is all; out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal--a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like unto His glorious body. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit will live forever." His work continues today through the Moody Memorial Church and the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. _______________________________________________________________________ (5) <BIBLE-STUDY> THEY DIGNITY OF CHRIST F.B. Meyer "Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Being made so much better than the angels." HEBREWS i. 3, 4. In these few lines we can but lightly touch on the majestic titles which a loving and adoring heart here heaps around the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. The theme might well engage a seraph's tongue! Yet our hearts may glow with ardor of the same nature, if not of the same amount. And perhaps we may be conscious of elements of rapture which the sons of light may never know, because of his near kinship to us. "My heart overfloweth with a goodly matter: I speak the things which I have made touching the King." SON.-" He hath spoken unto us in his Son." God has many sons, but only one Son. When, on the morning of his resurrection, our Lord met the frightened women, he said, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God." But, as he used the words, they meant infinitely more of himself than they could ever mean of man, however saintly or childlike. No creature-wing shall ever avail to carry us across the abyss which separates all created from all uncreated life. But we may reverently accept the fact, so repeatedly emphasized, that Jesus is "the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father" (John i. i8). He is Son in a sense altogether unique. This term, as used by our Lord, and as understood by the Jews, not only signified divine relationship, but divine equality. Hence, on one occasion, the Jews sought to kill him, because he said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God (John v. i8). And he, so far from correcting the opinion-as he must have done instantly, had it been erroneous, went on to confirm it and to substantiate its truthfulness. The impression which Jesus of Nazareth left on all who knew him was that of his extreme humility; but here was a point in which he could not abate one jot or tittle of his claims, lest he should be false to his knowledge of himself, and to the repeated voice of God. And so he died, because he affirmed, amid the assumed horror of his judges, that he was the Christ, the Son of God. "He counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God." It was his right. His dignity is still further elaborated in the words which follow. He is THE BEAM OF THE DIVINE GLORY, for so might the word translated effulgence be rendered. We have never seen the sun, but only its far-travelled ray, which left its surface some few minutes before. But the ray is of the same constitution as the orb from which it comes; if you unravel its texture, you will learn something of the very nature of the sun; they live in perpetual and glorious unity. And as we consider the intimacy of that union, we are reminded of those familiar words, which tell us that though no man hath seen God at any time, yet he has been revealed in the Word made flesh. We hear our Master saying again the old, deep, mysterious words: "I and my Father are one. We will come and make our abode." And we can sympathize with the evening hymn of the early Church, sung around the shores of the Bosphorus: "Hail! gladdening Light, of his pure glory poured, Who is the Immortal Father, Heavenly, Blest." He is also THE IMPRESS OF THE DIVINE NATURE. The allusion here is to the impression made by a seal on molten wax; and as the image made on the wax is the exact resemblance, though on another substance, of the die, so is Christ the exact resemblance of the Father in our human flesh. And thus he was able to say, "He that bath seen me hath seen the Father." The Life of Jesus is the Life of God rendered into the terms of our human life; so that we may understand the very being and nature of God by seeing it reproduced before us, so far as it is possible, in the character and life of Jesus. These two images complete each other. You might argue from the first, that as the ray is only part of the sun, so Christ is only part of God; but this mistake is corrected by the second, for an impression must be coextensive with the seal. You might argue from the second, that as the impression might be made on a very inferior material, so Christ's nature was a very unworthy vehicle of the divine glory; but this mistake is corrected by the first, for a beam is of the same texture as the sun. Coextensive with God, of the same nature as God; thus is Jesus Christ. He is, therefore, superior to angels (ver. 4).-Lofty as was the esteem in which Hebrew believers had been wont to hold those bright and blessed spirits, they were not for a moment to be compared with him whose majestic claims are the theme of these glowing words. He surpasses them in the glory of Divine Nature. Turn to Psalm ii. -one of the grandest miniature dramas in all literature. Probably composed on some marked episode in the reign of David, there is a glow, a sublimity, in the diction which no earthly monarch could exhaust. We are not, therefore, surprised to find the early Church applying it to Christ (Acts iv. 25). In reading it, we first hear the roar of the mob and the calm decision of the throne; and then our attention is centered on him who comes forward, bearing the divine autograph to the decree which declares him Son. Nothing like this was ever said to angel, how-ever exalted in character or devoted in service. It is only befitting, then, that the unsinning sons of light should worship him; and as we hear the command issued, "Let all the angels of God worship him," we are still further impressed by the immense distance between their nature and his. Do we worship him enough? During his earthly life he was constantly met by expressive acts of homage, which, unlike Peter in the house of Cornelius, he did not repress. The almost instinctive act of the little group, from which he was parted on the Mount of Olives in his ascension, was to worship him (Luke xxiv. 52). And no sooner had he passed to his home than there burst from the Church a tide of adoration which has only become wider and deeper with the ages. The Epistles, and especially the Book of Revelation, teem with expressions of worship to Christ. And the death-cries of martyrs must have familiarized the heathen mind with the homage paid to Christ by Christians. Of the worship offered him in catacombs, or in their secret meetings, amongst dens and caves, paganism was necessarily ignorant. But the behaviour and exclamations of the servants of Jesus, arraigned before heathen tribunals, and exposed to the most agonizing deaths, were matters of public notoriety. Some years ago, beneath the ruins of the Palatine palace, was discovered a rough sketch, traced in all probability by the hand of a pagan slave in the second century. A human figure, with the head of an ass, is represented as fixed to the cross; while another figure, in a tunic, stands on one side, making a gesture which was the customary pagan expression of adoration. Underneath this caricature ran the inscription, rudely written, Alexamenos adores his God. But what a tribute to the worship paid in those early days to our Saviour, amidst gibes and taunts and persecution! The hymns which have come down to us ring with the same spirit. Pliny writes to tell the Emperor that the Christians of Asia Minor were accustomed to meet to sing praise to Christ as God. As each morning broke, the believer of those primitive days repeated in private the Gloria in Excelsis, as his hymn of supplication and praise: "Thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father." The early Church did not simply admire Christ, it adored him. Is not this a great lack in our private devotions? We are so apt to concentrate our thoughts on ourselves; and to thank for what we have received. We do not sufficiently often forget our own petty wants and anxieties, and launch down our tiny rivulet, until we are borne out into the great ocean of praise, which is ever breaking in music around the person of Jesus. Praise is one of the greatest acts of which we are capable; and it is most like the service of heaven. There they ask for naught, for they have all and abound; but throughout the cycles of glory the denizens of those bright worlds fill them with praise. And why should not earthly tasks be wrought to the same music? We are the priests of creation; it becomes us to gather up and express the sentiments which are mutely dumb, but which await our offering at the altar of God. Let a part of our private and public devotion be ever dedicated to the praise of Jesus; when we shall break forth into some hymn, or psalm, or spiritual song, singing and praising Christ with angels and archangels and all the hosts of the redeemed. On that brow, once thorn-crowned, let us entwine our laurels. Upon that ear, once familiarized with threats and scorn, let us pour the fullness of our adoring devotion. So shall we gain and give new thoughts of the supreme dignity of the Lord Jesus. "Thou art worthy to receive...honour." _______________________________________________________________________ (6) <POEM> FELLOWSHIP WITH CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS J. Berridge Luke 24. 26, 46 What a doleful voice I hear! What a garden-scene is there! What a frightful, ghastly flood! Jesus weltering in his blood! Groaning on the ground he lies; Seems a slaughtered sacrifice! Tells me, with a feeble breath, "Sorrowful, yea, unto death!" [How his eyes astonished are! Sure they witness conflict near! On his face what sadness dwells! Sure he feels a thousand hells!] O my Jesus, let me know What has brought this heavy woe; Swords are piercing through thy heart; Whence arose the torturing smart? "Sinner, thou hast done the deed; Thou hast made the Saviour bleed! Justice drew its sword on me! Pierced my heart to pass by thee! "Now I take the deadly cup; All its dregs am drinking up; Read my anguish in my gore; Look, and pierce my heart no more." O thou bleeding love divine, What are other loves to thine? Theirs a drop, and thine a sea, Ever full, and ever free! If I loved my Lord before, I would love him ten times more; Drop into his sea outright, Lose myself in Jesus quite. ___________________________<BrethrenVoice>___________________________ [which seeks to be guided solely by the New Testament Biblical pattern, facilitates free flow of Christian information. 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