At the beginning of the New Year, a great many people examine and assess their lives,
and many of those make physical fitness goals for the year ahead.
We're almost a full month into 2013 now, and perhaps you've done that very same thing this year . . .
but have you ever considered the spiritual fitness that the Lord God Almighty requires of you?
Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him.
This He gives you, this He gives you,
'Tis the Spirit's rising beam.
(from Joseph Hart's hymn, "Come Ye Sinners," emphasis mine)
Have you ever felt your need of Him?
The 400 men who felt their need of David
The other night I was in a Bible study of I Samuel, and I shared how I LOVE the account of the 400 men who gathered themselves to David (I Samuel 22:1-5). Why do I love this account? Because David himself was an Old Testament type of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the meek and lowly posture of those men is exactly the position poor and needy sinners find ourselves as we first come to Christ, as well as the position we must remain in as we continue to abide in Christ and let His words abide in us –– as we live as branches seeking to draw vital sustenance from the True Vine day by day, and moment by moment ~ John 15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing... Songs 8:5 Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?).
I Samuel 22:2 And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.
Have you felt your need of the Son of David?
In like manner, every one who comes to Jesus must acknowledge and confess from the heart that he is in distress, in debt and discontented –– or, using Joseph Hart's words, you must come to feel your need of the Son of David.
"The Son of David is ready to receive distressed souls, that will appoint Him their captain and be commanded by Him. He receives all who come unto Him, however vile and miserable..."
~ my melding of Matthew Henry's Complete and Concise Commentaries on I Samuel 22:2
Isn't that a marvelous truth?! The only begotten Son of God is the Son of David, and He is ready to receive distressed, indebted and discontented souls! Jesus Christ receives all who come unto Him! What Good News that is to all who have known such distress, debt and discontentment... however vile and miserable we might be! Look through the Gospels and see how tax collectors and sinners drew near to eat with Him! See how women and children flocked to the arms of the Good Shepherd! All you who are distressed today, come to Him, however vile and miserable you might be! Remember, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ delights in showing mercy (Micah 7:18) –– He delights in lavishing love, mercy and grace upon the chief of sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ! Whosoever will may come to the True Bread and the Living Water to eat and drink, so you might never hunger or thirst!
O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
to every believer the promise of God;
the vilest offender who truly believes,
that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.
(from Fanny Crosby's "To God Be the Glory")
In First Samuel 22, each and every soul who came to David had been filled with a holy distress. In the exact same way, every soul who ultimately comes to Jesus also shares in that same holy distress. That holy distress is the precious gift of God, and it is wholly necessary, for without a sense of holy distress, we will neither despise nor cast off our own fleshly confidence, our hard-hearted, stubborn sufficiency, and deadly self-reliance. And only as we come to see that any and every thing that comes from our own flesh and any and all help we might receive from the arm of man is all vanity and dung (as the apostle Paul said in Philippians 3:1-11), will we humble ourselves in the sight of God and cast ourselves wholly upon the God who is rich in mercy to save us. Christ must save, and Christ alone!
Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone.
(from Augustus Toplady's "Rock of Ages")
• Unless and until you see you are not fit in and of yourself, unless and until you feel your need of Him, you will never come to Jesus Christ, the only fitting Savior for sinners.
Until we cry out with Peter, "To whom shall we go?..." (John 6:68), until we see that there is no salvation in any other, until we admit our spiritual bankruptcy, until we own that we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away (Isaiah 64:6-7), then we will not approach the mercy seat for the gift of salvation which is available through Christ alone.
Acts 4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
Unless and until we feel our need of Him ... unless we see our true spiritual condition, unless the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:8-11), our spiritual position is no different than the rich man in the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus: a great gulf fixed exists between ourselves and Christ (Luke 16:19-31); we are infinitely far away from the fitness He requires.
And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed:
so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot;
neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
(Luke 16:26)
If you're not aware of it, the name Lazarus is Greek for the Hebrew Elazar, meaning "God has helped." If you're familiar with Robert Robinson's hymn "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," you know the line:
"Here I raise my Ebenezer..."
(based on I Sam. 7:12: Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Eben–ezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us)
The Hebrew root word "ezer" means help. Notice how the name Elazar contains the root "azar" ("ezer"), plus the name of God ("El"). How blessed are helpless beggars like Lazarus whom God has helped! Blessed are men, women, boys and girls whom Christ is calling from every tongue, tribe and nation –– poor and needy souls who come to see their helplessness and feel their need of Christ. Blessed are those who have come to the end of themselves and can do nothing but appeal to God for mercy and grace through Jesus Christ, to seek the LORD for His help and to praise Him for His help poured out from the throne of grace. Blessed are those who proclaim the joyful song: "I could do nothing. I could not help myself. But I was enabled to feel my need of Him, and this poor soul cried out to the Lord, and He heard my cry! God has helped! God has been my Helper, and He will continue to be my Helper till the end! He is able to help me and save me to the uttermost!"
• Have you owned that you are helpless? Have you received a spiritual sight of your need of the Son of David?
O! for the moment we feel our need of Christ: –– blessed heavenly fitness! –– we flee to Jesus Christ (just as those men gathered to David), and as we cling to and follow hard after Him, as we embrace our Savior and make Him our Captain, here are some of the exceeding great and precious promises we can embrace along with Him:
Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Those 400 men had come to see they had no fitness in and of themselves. They were in debt, and they knew it, and they freely acknowledged they had come to the end of themselves and their own supplies, and they gathered to David.
Along with those men, have you been blessed to see your own poverty of spirit, and come to the Son of David? Have you been given a true spiritual sight of your own spiritual bankruptcy and come to Jesus? Have you been convicted of sin and seen that you have fallen short of the glory of God? Have you seen that there is a sin debt which you could never pay in and of yourself? Has your mouth become stopped as you have seen that your are rightly judged as guilty before God? Have you seen that your sin and your guilt needs to be covered and forgiven and washed away by the blood of the Lamb? Have you seen that in order to stand unashamed in the presence of a holy God you need a righteousness that far exceeds that of the Pharisees? Have you had a view of the thrice Holy God and become undone? Have you seen a glimpse of God's just wrath that rightly judges sinners, and that the wrath of the Lamb cannot be satisfied by anything else but the blood of the Lamb shed on Calvary's cross? Have you mourned your own sinfulness and your sin? Have you seen the Lord Jesus was crucified in your place to take away your record of debt? Have you seen that you are a debtor to mercy alone? Have you cried out for a new, soft heart to replace your heart of stone? Have you humbled yourself in the eyes of the Lord? Are you hungering and thirsting for a righteousness than you in your own best efforts can never produce? In other words . . .
Have you come to see that you have no spiritual fitness in and of yourself, and have you appealed to Jesus Christ to save you on the merits of God's mercy alone, and Jesus' covenant, blood and righteousness alone?
• Unless you come to a spiritual sight that you have no fitness in and of yourself, you will never come to the only fitting Savior for sinners!
About that word discontented, Albert Barnes writes:
"Discontented... The phrase here denotes those who were exasperated by Saul's tyranny."
~ from Barnes' Notes on the Bible
In their exasperation, those 400 men keenly felt their need of a new sovereign. As a result, they sought out David and joyfully cleaved to David and willingly submitted themselves to Him as their captain. Have you been brought to see your own inability and your own lack of fitness? Unless you do so, you cannot feel your need of Jesus Christ, the Son of David. Know this, He is only a Captain to those whose eyes have been opened their own vileness and lack of fitness and to those who have become exasperated by the tyranny of their own flesh, the devil and the world. How do we show we have made Him Captain? We rejoice with trembling as we kiss the Son (Psalm 2), we cast off our idols and bow to Christ and Christ alone as the King of kings and Lord of lords, and willingly offer ourselves to follow the Lamb wherever He goes. Having been freed from slavery to sin, the devil and the world, having been united to Christ and raised with Christ, through His resurrection power at work in us, we seek to mortify the deeds of the body by the Spirit, we put on the whole armor of God and walk circumspectly so we might guard against the wiles of the devil, we take every thought captive, and we walk in the light as He is in the light and we reject the darkness of the world.
John Elias: a sinful, vile and miserable man who saw himself as nothing and felt his need of Christ
Most of you know how much I love reading Christian biography. I'm currently reading a book about the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist minister, John Elias (1774-1842). Elias was a man who felt his need of Christ and showed himself to be one of the company who gathered to Jesus Christ. Near the end of his life, Elias penned the words below. Like the Psalmist (Psalm 45), Elias' heart overflowed and his tongue was the pen of a ready writer, as he freely and openly and joyfully confessed his own lack of fitness and unreservedly expressed his utter need of Christ and happily exulted in God's sufficiency and fullness and fitness that overflowed to him from the throne of grace and overflows to every poor and needy sinner who comes boldly to the great High Priest, Jesus, the Son of God.
"I have written a brief account of my life from infancy till now (sixty-seven years of age), of the Lord's goodness towards me, and a review of his work amongst the Calvinistic Methodists. I have written this in my sick room, not knowing but that I am on the plains of Moab, on the brink of Jordan. I wrote a few lines now and then, in sorrow and through difficulty considering myself as writing every line in the presence of God, and writing perhaps that which will be read when I shall be quiet in the grave. I have nothing to say of myself, but of my sinfulness, vileness, and great misery; but I would be happy to speak of God's goodness, mercy, and grace towards me. 'This is the poor man that was raised out of the dust, and the needy man that was lifted out of the dunghill, and set with princes, even with the princes of his people'. If any good has been done by my imperfect labour, God in his grace has performed it. To him belongs the glory; I was as nothing."
~ John Elias, in "John Elias: Life, Letters and Essays" by Edward Morgan (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1973, revised edition published in one volume), 179, boldface mine
If you have never felt your need of Jesus Christ, if you consider yourself fit and sufficient in and of yourself, if you are continuing to put confidence in your own flesh (see Philippians 3), I plead with you to pray to God for His Holy Spirit to enlighten you, to impart to you a true sense of your need of Him, that you might join the apostle Paul, John Elias, those 400 men who gathered themselves to David, along with millions and millions of saints, and come to experience the spiritual fitness that God requires.
Here's the full text of Joseph Hart's hymn, expressing the invitation to sinners to come to Jesus . . .
1. Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus, ready, stands to save you,
Full of pity, joined with power.
He is able, He is able;
He is willing; doubt no more.
2. Come ye needy, come, and welcome,
God's free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.
Without money, without money
Come to Jesus Christ and buy.
3. Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Bruised and broken by the fall;
If you tarry 'til you're better,
You will never come at all.
Not the righteous, not the righteous;
Sinners Jesus came to call.
4. Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him.
This He gives you, this He gives you,
'Tis the Spirit's rising beam.
5. Lo! The Incarnate God, ascended;
Pleads the merit of His blood.
Venture on Him; venture wholly,
Let no other trust intrude.
None but Jesus, none but Jesus
Can do helpless sinners good.
John 6:37b All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.
Related:
Advent #3 WHY HAS JESUS COME? not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance
First Week of Advent: The Most Scandalous Bailout Ever
Bible Reading: Luke--God's Kingdom Economy: Losers Who Win, or Grace Is Amazing Only to Those Who See Themselves as Wretched....
Why not pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit
trusting the eagles' wings (reliance on the Holy Spirit)
Blessed dependence ~ "Leaning upon her beloved"
Birthday reflections ~ "Keep me an infant" (Isaiah 46:1-4)
by my God I can leap over a wall (Psalm 18:29b)
Can two walk together... Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit...
the poor & needy & joy ~ Psalm 35:9-10 | letter 105 on assurance & fighting for joy
at death and in life "there is only one thing that matters" (Lloyd-Jones' last days)
Outcast vine, faithless bride ~ What beauty? What did you see?
Surely none is righteous, no, not one ~ The Pharisee's Warning (Ecclesiastes 7:20, Romans 3:9-10)
Photo credits:
Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fitness_Center.JPG / CC BY-SA 3.0
Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HK_Wong_Chuk_Hang_%E5%8C%85%E7%8E%89%E5%89%9B%E6%B8%B8%E6%B3%B3%E6%B1%A0_Pao_Yue_Kong_Swimming_Pool_31_Weighing_scale_May-2012.JPG / CC BY-SA 3.0
Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Dore_Lazarus_and_the_Rich_Man.jpg / {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}
Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Roos_-_John_Elias_(1839).jpg / {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
July 10, 2013 was the 504th anniversary of John Calvin's birth.
A brief review... the acronym TULIP is sometimes used as a brief summary of Calvinism/ Reformed theology. I realize there's much more to it than this, but here goes:
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