S. The Peaceable Fruit of Righteousness
THE PEACEABLE FRUIT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
“For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Return, Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And 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.” - Psalms 90:7-17 THE occasion of this Psalm or prayer of Moses the man of God, is generally believed to have been the sad sentence pronounced upon the people for their refusal to go up to possess the land; a sad sentence indeed, and in several views very severe. Consider the position of the people under it. First, instead of entering at once into the promised inheritance, they are doomed to wander forty years in the wilderness. Secondly, they are told that within that period all above the age of twenty are to die. And thirdly, their manner of life is to be very wearisome, marching up and down the dreary desert, or wearing out long intervals of dull repose. All the while they are to be ever freshly reminded of their sin and its sentence, by that holy mountain lifting its frowning head against them, as well as by grave after grave receiving the bodies of the dead. It is, one would say, a dreary enough prospect, with which images of glory, beauty, joy, ideas of cheerful work crowned with bright success, are anything but congenial. Nevertheless, the closing verses of this Psalm are singularly healthful and hopeful. They are so, because they are the peaceable fruit of righteousness which affliction always yields to them that are exercised thereby. Moses, the man of God, who composed the prayer, and those who joined in spirit with him, got this good of the Lord’s chastening. Observe here - I. how they were exercised (Psalms 90:7-15); and then II. what fruit their being exercised yielded (Psalms 90:16-17).
I. Passing over the first six verses, which contrast generally the unchangeableness of God, as his people’s dwelling-place, with their frailty and mortality, and so lay a deep and sure foundation for faith and hope as against sight and sense, I find in what follows (Psalms 90:7-15) a double exercise of soul, in the way (1) of believing penitence (Psalms 90:7-12), and (2) of believing appropriation and assurance (Psalms 90:13-15).
1. There is an exercise of penitential faith, or believing repentance; for it is the same thing; “For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalms 90:7-12). These are the sentiments of genuine contrition. This sorrow is not the sorrow of the world which worketh death, but that godly sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation, not to be repented of. Their sin is ever before them. They apprehend the guilt, they accept the punishment of their transgression. “Thine anger,” “thy wrath” (Psalms 90:7); “our iniquities,” “our secret sins” (Psalms 90:8); again, “thy wrath” (Psalms 90:9); and yet again, “thine anger” (Psalms 90:11); and once more, “thy wrath” (Psalms 90:11); these are the thoughts which vex them. Thus, in all their vexing thoughts, God is uppermost; he is all in all. Are we consumed? It is by thine anger. Are we troubled? It is by thy wrath. Our iniquities? They are set before thee. Our secret sins? They are in the light of thy countenance. If all our days are passed away, and we spend our years as a tale that is told; it is in thy just indignation, Lord. Thou art righteous. We have sinned.
Surely God is again enthroned in the hearts of men who speak thus. They do not bewail their own sad case as if they had been hardly dealt with. They do not brood over the vanity that blights their fairest earthly hopes as if they had a right to complain of it, or to resent it. It is sin that grieves them, their sin against God. It is the just wrath of God lying upon them that weighs them down. Ah! what was our guilt when we would not trust our God who brought us out of Egypt, and would not obey his voice, how inexcusable, how aggravated! And how insupportable the thought of his displeasure, his indignation! - the displeasure, the indignation, not of a being who in fitful passion or personal resentment may strike a hasty blow and then relent, but of one whose holy, righteous, unchanging nature makes his holy indignation, and his calm, judicial sentence of righteous wrath all the more appalling! For who knoweth the power of thine anger? Thou art the immutable, everlasting God. As such thou art to be feared. And according to thy fear so is thy wrath. But who knoweth thy fear, as the measure of thy wrath and of the power of thine anger? Who knoweth how thou, the Almighty, the Unchangeable, art to be feared? These workers of iniquity, have they that knowledge? Alas! is it not their fond dream that the arm of omnipotence may not reach them, that eternal justice may bend to them? And do you know how God is to be feared, and what according to his fear must be the power of his anger, you who in some hour of pensive thought muse on the sad vicissitudes of things, and call your musing piety?
Among the ranks of that broken army which has so narrowly missed the prize of Canaan many are the forms which disappointment takes. Some are murmuring and fretting; thinking that they do well to be angry; nursing their smothered, sullen discontent. Others are lamenting their hard fate; laying all the blame on their neighbours or on circumstances; and meekly consenting to be victims. There are those who affect a stern and stoical fortitude; while in the case of not a few, the torturing recollections of the past, the bitter experience of the present, and the dark outlook into the future, conspire to foster a sort of indolent despair. But who among them knoweth the power of thine anger? Ah! if they were thoroughly alive to that, how would all other miseries shrink into insignificance! Sin and wrath; our sin and thy wrath; these are the terrible realities! Oh that we, and all our fellow-sufferers under the sentence which writes vanity on life and all its interests were made to know thy fear as measuring thy wrath! Whether our days here be few or many; a hundred, or fourscore, or but a span; whether joyous or sad; whatever may be the colour of the hours as they are fleeting fast away; the one awful consideration is that we. Lord, are guilty and thou art just. Let our sin find us out. Let us know the terror of the Lord; how fearful a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Let us mark the flight of time as it is hurrying us on, all guilty as we are, to meet thine inexorable award. “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalms 90:12).
2. With this exercise of believing penitence, the subsequent exercise of believing appropriation and assurance corresponds: “Return, Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil” (Psalms 90:13-15). Here again the suppliants are wholly occupied with the thought of God. They are not concerned about the suffering they have brought upon themselves, the loss of Canaan and the weary wilderness probation. That is not in their view. It is about the terms on which they are to be with God - his disposition towards them and their relation to him - that they are now solicitous. Let there be peace again between them and him. That is enough for them.
Surely God is again enthroned in the hearts of men who think, and feel, and speak thus. Look for a little at their prayer. “Return, Lord, how long?” (Psalms 90:13). It is thy departure from us; it is thine absence from among us, that we lament and deprecate. Art thou leaving us? Hast thou left us? Nay, but return, Lord! Thou mightest justly have left us long ago. Thou mightest justly leave us now. But return, Lord! for we cannot now dispense with thy gracious presence. We cannot live without thee!
Once we cared little to have thee consciously and favourably present with us. We rather sought to get away from thee, and put thee far from us. We could be well content that there should be between thee and us the distance of cold and dead estrangement, or at the best, of decent compromise. If it is otherwise now, it is to thee that we owe the gracious change. Thou hast taught us to know thee; to know thee not only in the terror of thy wrath, but in the riches of thy grace, as the sure dwelling-place of thy people in all generations. Greatly art thou to be feared, in thine unchangeableness. From everlasting to everlasting thou art God. But how lovely art thou, and how loving! Thou hast so opened to us thy heart, and so opened our hearts to thee, that we cannot now consent to let thee go. Return, Lord! once more visit us with the light of thy countenance! There may be no change, we ask for no change, in thy dealings with us. Let us still have the wilderness for our earthly portion instead of Canaan. But so far “let it repent thee concerning thy servants,” that we may realise a change in thy disposition toward us; and may feel that thou art not now angry with us, but pacified towards us; that we are no longer under thy just sentence of wrath, but find grace and favour in thine eyes. “satisfy us early with thy mercy” (Psalms 90:14).
Yes! It is thy mercy we seek. That will satisfy us. Let it be ours, Lord. Let it be ours speedily, soon, early, now. Whatever fruit of it is to come in the shape of ulterior good may be postponed. But thy mercy itself! Let it be early - now. Now in the early morning of that new pilgrimage on which we are entering; now, in the early commencement of our subjection to vanity by reason of sin; only let thy mercy be thus early ours. It is enough. We shall be satisfied. We ask no more. “We will rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalms 90:14). Do thou thus “make us glad;” and we will testify, as we shall have good cause to testify, that this gladness, in the mere experience of thy present mercy, thy returning favour and our reconciliation and peace with thee, is more than an equivalent, far more than the fullest compensation, for “the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil” (Psalms 90:15).
II. Such being the double exercise of faith apprehending sin and wrath and faith appropriating assuredly love and mercy, to which affliction brought these men of God, we are prepared to expect and to understand the peaceable fruit of righteousness which it yielded to them; as we have it set forth in the close of the Psalm. “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And 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” (Psalms 90:16-17). The three petitions here presented point to work, or entering into work, as being that peaceable fruit of righteousness. The first speaks of God’s work. The third speaks of their own work. The second, or intermediate one, brings out the character which is indispensable for entering aright into either of these works, or into both.
1. The Lord’s work comes first. These praying men of God, penitent and believing, ask him to give them and their children a sight of that, and an insight into its glory. This is what is uppermost in their minds. It is their first and chief concern. And is not the fact of its being so the clear proof of their being now on a gracious footing with God, and of a gracious mind toward him? For it is not the way of nature, but the way of grace. Naturally we give precedence and priority to our own work rather than to the Lord’s. We think of our work appearing to him rather than of his work appearing to us; of our goodness rather than of his glory. We would have our work acceptable in his sight rather than his work acceptable in our sight. Something in us or about us, some good done by us, or some good wrought in us, we would have God to look upon with complacency; so far at least as to be induced by it to look upon us with compassion. That is the way of nature. There is grace, and sure evidence of grace, when the Lord’s work, on the contrary, takes the first place in our esteem. Now we see that it is not his beholding our work, but our beholding his, that alone can be of any avail to save us. And seeing this, we long for fuller discoveries of that saving work of the Lord; and a deeper, truer, more experimental apprehension or sense of its worthiness of him and its suitableness to us - in a word, of his glory in it: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children” (Psalms 90:16).
It is a prayer for the Holy Spirit; and for the Holy Spirit as discharging his double office; on the one hand, opening up to us more and more from without, or as it were, objectively, through the instrumentality of the word, the work of the Lord; giving us larger and loftier views of its character and nature; “Let thy work appear unto us:” and on the other hand, opening up in us, within, and as it were, subjectively, by an immediate touching of our inner man, the eye of the mind, the soul, the heart; so as to make it more capable of not only understanding the work of the Lord more clearly in all its bearings, but perceiving, recognising, and appreciating, with livelier sympathy, his glory in. it: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children” (Psalms 90:16). For it is not enough that his work appears, unless his glory in it appears also. Hence there must be a double action, so to speak, of the Holy Spirit. He acts by means of outward revelation, withdrawing more and more, through his blessing on your study of the Scriptures, the veil that hides the wondrous working of the Lord. And he acts by means of inward renewal, intensifying your new born and new created faculty of discerning spiritual things, so that you see, more and more, in all the wondrous working of the Lord, his wondrous glory. The petition, therefore, of Psalms 90:16 betokens a gracious state of things, as between God and the people who with Moses make it their own; and a gracious frame of mind on their part towards God. Thy work, they say, Lord, and not ours, is what alone is worthy of our regard. And by the help of thy Spirit, we would see in it thy glory; thy glorious character; thy glorious self: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children” (Psalms 90:16). Ah! they might well feel, thy work might have appeared to us ere now; and it has appeared to us so far as to leave us without excuse. But we saw it not. We saw not thy glory in it. We might have seen both. The glory of thy rich redeeming love we might have seen in thy remembrance of us when we were in Egypt. The glory of thy sin-hating and sin-punishing righteousness we might have seen in the lamb slain for our ransom. The glory of thy power we might have seen in the Egyptian miracles and the passage through the Red Sea; the glory of thine avenging justice and righteous judgment in the overthrow of Pharaoh and all his host; the glory of thy holy sovereignty in the awful lawgiving at Sinai; the glory of thy forbearance and bountifulness in the abundant manna, the water from the smitten rock; the earnest of final conquest in the victory over Amalek. All this work of thine, and thy glory in it; thy glorious character, thy glorious self, we might have seen, had not our eyes been blinded and our hearts hardened. Alas! we cared but little about thy work, or thy glory, or thyself, Lord! But all that we shut out from our view then we would see now. Let us see it, Lord, so as to make us more and more ashamed of our not having seen it before; of our having been so insensible to it as to do great injustice to thee in our thoughts of thee; misunderstanding and misconstruing thy ways; murmuring against thy dealings with us; distrusting thee; counting thy commandments grievous; questioning thy power to fulfil thine own word and oath. Could we have so wronged thee if thy work had then appeared to us, and thy glory in it? That we may not so wrong thee now, show us thy manner of working; and show us all its glory, as glorifying thee in saving us: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children” (Psalms 90:16). In the experience of Moses, and of all like-minded with him, this prayer, as regards this petition, was fully answered. They had their full share of the hardships of the wilderness. Its vicissitudes and judgments, its calamities and crimes affected them even more than the callous and careless multitude; who have always a wonderful facility of accommodation to circumstances. Men of God, however, cannot thus fall in with the course of the world. On the contrary, they cannot but be sensitively alive to all the hindrances and annoyances which it puts in the way of the march to Canaan. But all the while the Lord is working. All along the weary road and its weary trials, these men of God discover and perceive this; and they glorify the Lord accordingly. How the Lord works, and how glorious he is in working they come to see more and more, as they learn more and more to link on his present working in his providence over them with his past working in redemption for them. Light more and more breaks in upon them; and with light, trust and love. They learn to justify God, and to believe assuredly that, as he worketh always, so in all his working he is always to be glorified: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children” (Psalms 90:16).
How much more should you learn the lesson of this petition! For what is the work to which you have to point? And what is God’s glory in if? It is not any Egyptian deliverance, or wilderness provision, that you have to bear upon your minds when you offer this prayer, “Let thy work appear unto thy servants.” What work? The work finished on the cross of Christ; the work of divine propitiation and reconciliation. “And thy glory in it;” such glory as may prompt that blessed argument of confidence: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?”
2. The second petition is naturally suggested by the first, and forms a fitting introduction to the third. It is a prayer for personal holiness. It represents that holiness as being intimately connected, on the one hand, with the Lord’s causing his work, and his glory in it, to appear unto us; and on the other hand, with our being enabled so to work ourselves as to warrant our asking God to establish the work of our hands: “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” It is the beauty of holiness that is here prayed for. It is the beauty of the Lord; the beauty of the Lord’s own holiness; the holy beauty which belongs essentially to the Lord alone, but of which he permits you to ask that you may be yourselves partakers.
This, indeed, is the design and end of all the Lord’s dealings with you, when he humbles you, and proves you, and chastens you; not for his own pleasure, but for your profit, that you may “be partakers of his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). For this end “exceeding great and precious promises are given unto you, that by them you may be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). All this is implied in the petition, “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” You ask, for yourselves and for your children, that you may see the Lord’s work, and his glory in it. You ask also that, “beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, you may be changed into the same image, from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord.” You desire to “behold the beauty of the Lord” as you “dwell in his house, and inquire in his temple.” You desire to be transformed into his beauteous image; to be like-minded and like-hearted with him; to see light in his light; to love as he loves; and be holy as he is holy. This indeed is the secret, at once of your getting an ever-increasing faculty of insight into the work of the Lord and his glory in it; and of your being yourselves created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works; such good works as you can ask the Lord to establish. It is the secret charm of sympathy. Let thy beauty be upon us. Let our nature shine in holy beauty like thine own. Give us a fellowship and fellow-feeling with thyself in the beauty of thine own holiness. Then will thy work more and more appear unto us, and thy glory in it. We shall enter with growing intelligence, as we enter with growing sympathy, into the whole plan and purpose of thy wondrous work of salvation. We shall better understand what thou art doing. Thy forbearance in so long sparing the guilty and waiting still to be gracious; thy terrible judgments, giving presage of wrath to come; thy discipline in the training of thy saints; the march of thy gospel; the movements of thy Spirit; the progress of thy cause; thy hand controlling all events; thy finger touching dead souls that they may live; above all, thy free and sovereign way of justifying the ungodly who believe in Christ. Ah! Lord God! were thy beauty upon us; were we like thee; were we wholly in thy interest and on thy side; were we thine in full sympathy, thine with all our heart, how would we delight always, everywhere, anywhere, to be tracing thee in thy working among the families of men! And how would thy grace, and wisdom, and righteousness, and truth, and love - in a word, thy glory, as manifested in it all, become more and more conspicuous and illustrious in our wondering eyes. “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children” (Psalms 90:16). And then, on the other hand, let us consider, how, by the same beautifying and sanctifying process, we may be fitted not only for entering, as believers and sympathisers, into the work of the Lord, but for entering into it also as fellow-workers with him in it. Thy work, Lord, may thus become our work; and all our work may thus be thy work; our only work being to carry forward thy work.
3. Therefore, Lord, we may venture to append this third petition to our prayer: “And establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it” (Psalms 90:17, 2d clause). For on their work as well as on themselves the penitent and believing people of God, led on by Moses, the man of God, may invoke the divine blessing. And in virtue of that blessing, their work acquires a character of stability, permanence, endurance, contrasting strangely with the vanity of their wilderness state. Yes! every work of theirs may now be established in the Lord. Even if it is a work that seems to belong to their wilderness state of vanity, and to that alone; let it be the daily gathering of the manna, or the carrying of water from the rock and its stream for ordinary household uses, - still it is a work which they can ask the Lord to establish, having first looked to the Lord’s own work in connection with it, and besought the Lord to let his own holy beauty be upon them in the doing of it. For there is no appointed task; no necessary or lawful engagement; no drudgery, no toil, no menial service; no homely office, no domestic care; no study, no scholarly pursuit of learning; no professional discharge of duty; in the shop, or the exchange, or the market; in the office, at the bar, on the bench, in the senate; there is nothing you can at any time be honestly and with a clear conscience doing, let it have ever so close, and seemingly exclusive reference to the concerns of this passing world; which you may not ask the Lord to establish, if only you do the work as from, and for, and to, the Lord; seeking in the doing of it, to see his work and his glory as bearing upon it and to have his holy beauty shining through you in it. It may and it must, if you go about it in such a spirit, yield to you some permanent as well as peaceable fruit of righteousness. You come away from it and out of it, yourselves confirmed and established in your faith and loyalty and love. And it will follow you at last when you rest from your labours. Ye shall in no wise lose your reward. Therefore, brethren, “whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” And if all this is true when you make what might appear earthly work heavenly, wilderness work divinely beautiful, your own work the Lord’s, how much more must it be so when you make the Lord’s work yours when the work directly tends to the hallowing of his name, the coming of his kingdom, the doing of his will. Ah! there is a work here below which, while the world passeth away and the lust thereof, you may ask the Lord to establish. For he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
See that Israelitish man, or woman, or girl, or boy, running home to tell a brother, or sister, or parent, or child, of the preparation going on for the slaying of the paschal lamb; or eagerly persuading the wounded and the dying to behold the healing serpent lifted up before their eyes! Listen to that anxious trembling voice, warning a friend, a neighbour, against the yawning gulph in which the rebels are swallowed quick! Who are these little ones who are announcing so gladly to all they meet the first sounding of the trumpet at the joyous feast of tabernacles? Mark that hoary head winning from the mouth of babes and sucklings most sweet and perfect praise. The wilderness may be dreary. Life in it may be like a dream, a tale. It may look as if nothing, I can turn my hand to were worth a moment’s thought; so fleeting is everything, and so false! I build a tent; and to-morrow’s blast sweeps it away. I plant a gourd; and it withers in a night. I cling to one who is the light of my eyes, the desire, the darling of my heart; she droops and dies; and I am fain to bury her out of my sight. I choose a friend; and he forsakes me. I say, Here while I rest awhile; and lo! as I say it, there goes the ark, and I must shift my quarters to go along with it. Yes! It is a weary enough pilgrimage; so unsettled; so unsteadfast; so insecure. And I cannot, I dare not, ask the Lord to establish these things. I may not arrest one winged moment in the flight of time. I may not fondly grasp the loved one leaving me, and bid him tarry with, me a little, a very little longer. Ah, then! what is life worth in this desert, and with these wanderings? It is better to die than to live thus. There is no work or desire anywhere beneath that beating sun that is not wholly vanity. Not so, brother! Not so, thou mourning sister! There is a work of God which he will show you; a work very glorious - to thee to live is Christ. There is a work of thine which he will establish; thy work of faith and labours of love. Come, be not as those ‘who are ever going from Dan to Beersheba, crying that all is barren. There is a business going on in the earth that may well rouse all your energies, and interest your whole hearts. Come. See what God is doing! Cast yourself into the work which he has on hand. Be no more idle, “desponding, dreaming, drooping, woeful, wan, like one forlorn,” as if God were doing nothing in this world, and had nothing for you to do in it, in his name or on his behalf. Come. Join heart and soul; voice, hands, feet; with all your manhood, renovated, quickened, gladdened by God’s grace, join in this joyous closing prayer of Moses, the man of God: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And 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.”
Observe the work of the Lord and his glory in it. Much stress is laid on that in the experimental parts of Scripture. The Psalms are full of it (Psalms 40:5; Psalms 92:4; Psalms 77:10; Psalms 105:4;Psalms 111:2). And the neglect of this duty is pointedly and emphatically condemned both by the Psalmist (Psalms 28:5)[1] and still more by the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 5:8-12).[2] The contrast here is striking. It brings out the utter incompatibility of these two things, as objects of regard; the world’s work and God’s work. If you give heed to the one, you neglect the other. The world’s work may be business (Psalms 90:8-10) or pleasure (Psalms 90:11-12); avarice or luxury; hasting to be rich, or saying, Let us eat and drink, and be merry. Whichever it be, it unfits you, if you go into it, for regarding the work of the Lord. And yet, after all, what is there in the world that is really worthy of your regard but the work of the Lord? What else is there that has an abiding character, or is of permanent value? All things are full of change. But the work of the Lord continues ever the same. All is vanity. But the work of the Lord is glorious. And he is glorious in it. Come, behold the working of the Lord.
Link and fasten on your own work to the Lord’s. Identify your work with his. It is only in so far as you do so, that you can ask the Lord to establish it. True, in one aspect of it, the work of the Lord is exclusively his own. What he is doing in his providence he does alone. You can but submit and say, “It is the Lord.” What he does in his grace, he does alone. You can but say, “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” But in another aspect of it, his work is such that it may become yours. He tells you what he is doing on the earth, that you may join yourself with him in the doing of it. He takes you into his counsels and unfolds to you his manner of working, that you may frame and fashion your manner of working in accordance with his. You are to work the works of God. How? The Jews once asked, and they got for answer: “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom God hath sent.” That is your first work; your first participation in God’s work; that ye believe in him whom he has sent; your believing corresponding to his sending. Christ being to you what he is to the Father, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Would you have the Lord to establish that work? See that you make sure of it yourselves. Let there be no unsteadfastness, no doubt or hesitation, about your working thoroughly this work of God; believing on him whom he has sent. And then let all your subsequent working, of whatever sort, be in harmony with his working. Let it become part and parcel of it. In all you think and say and do, let it be God working in, and by, and through you. Then, no thought, or word, or work of yours will perish or be lost. The Lord will establish it. Vain thoughts, idle words, worldly deeds, he cannot establish. They are as grass. But thoughts that grasp his thoughts; words that echo his words; deeds that aspire to fellowship in his own great deeds of love; Lord, thou canst, thou wilt establish these. Oh! then, let my thoughts, words, deeds, be ever thus godly, thus godlike.
All this implies your having the beauty of the Lord upon you, the beauty of his holiness, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” For it is only as being thus holy, partakers of his holiness, seeing things from his point of view, looking at them in the same light in which he looks at them, that you can hope, either to see his work so as to understand it, and sympathise with it, and appreciate his glory in it. And only thus can you make your work such as he will establish. Wherefore follow after holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.