The Bride Will Be The One Riding The Camel - Part 2
Writer Author Jerry Lee Kay Sr.
Christian Article
:
Bible Teaching
- Fiction No
...Continuation of Matthew 14
At the outset of this letter I want to say that it has taken me over 50 years to prepare for it. Many ups and downs have gone into the ability to pen these words, many failures and many victories on this "Journey of the Redeemed." At a very young age I felt the Holy Spirit tugging at my heart strings and I never considered being anything other than a Christian. Have I made mistakes? Yes indeed, some almost fatal. That is why I feel I am qualified to yield this offering.
I want to spend some time on the fourteenth chapter of Matthew. Some folks read and interpret the word of God only in a literal sense, if you are one of those you may as well stop here. For I am convinced and believe that all the actions of Christ are exhaustless fountains of revelation; they lift the curtain and let us look into the depths of His nature. His actions are not only histories of what He has done, but they are distinct prophecies of what He will do. His actions are never haphazard nor out of time and the order in which His actions follow each other is a beautiful unfolding of the method of all creation, also providence and grace. The Psalmist said,"How sweet are Thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through Thy precepts I get understanding: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path".
'And Jesus departed into a desert place apart: and when the people heard thereof, they followed Him on foot out of the cities'.(14:13) This was a great multitude of people, and they so hungered to hear the words of Jesus, they followed Him, on foot. These days people will not follow Him even in their automobiles. Many would rather stay home and watch church on TV. Hebrews tells us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as some is; and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. Beloved unless we have a health problem that limits our mobility, we should be in a local assembly on the Sabbath, not watching nor sending our tithes and offerings to some TV Evangelist, your tithes and offerings should go to your local church. I once had a sister in the Lord tell me she had sent her tithes and love offerings to one of these people and when her husband died she ask him to preach the funeral and he told her she must be joking he didn't have time, need I say more? I preached the man's funeral free of charge!
Give your support to a local assembly and pastor, then when the chips are down you will have someone there for you! If these people want to preach on TV let the church they pastor pay for it or don't do it. Many of them just squander your money anyway, building amusement parks and such in the name of Jesus. One of my untaught countryboy friends said . . . "If Jesus knew what them fellers was doing with all that money he'd turn over in His grave".
Jesus received word that John the Baptist has been beheaded, I am sure He was upset about his death, however the Christ also could see the hand writing on the wall. His time was drawing near and He needed some time alone. If you will allow, I need to di-gress for a moment. Our society is a hurried one even in the things of the church. Activity after activity, meeting after meeting, new books to read, preachers to hear, all needful, and believe it or not many times, may even be God sent . . . "He who is able to hear, let him listen to and heed what the Holy Spirit says". . . Rev 3:22.
It was time to rest, so Jesus took his disciples to a lonely desert place where they could have some privacy and quite time. If you spend your life blowing and going, and running full speed ahead without taking time with our Lord, then you are running at "fools speed" and eventually you will crash and burn. Get alone with God and let Him speak to your heart. It is when we are quite we find our way; I always loved that song that says," Shut in with God in a secret place, gaining new power to run in the race."
Someone told me a story, "Before refrigerators, people used icehouses to preserve their food. Icehouses had thick walls, no windows and a tight fitting door. In the northern areas when the lakes and streams froze they cut large blocks of ice, hauled them to the icehouse then covered them with sawdust and they would last into the summer. One man lost a high dollar watch in the sawdust while working in an icehouse, he and his friends searched and raked through the sawdust and couldn't find it. A small boy heard about it and slipped into the ice house when everyone had given up and gone to lunch, he found the watch and brought it out much to the amazement of the men. They asked him how he found it, he replied " I closed the door, laid down in the sawdust, and kept very still. Soon I heard the watch ticking."
Beloved, often the question is not whether God is speaking, but whether we are being still enough, and quite enough, to hear what He is saying to us. Amen? The psalmist said, "Stand in awe and sin not; commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still."
The man or woman who has no inner ear, no inner silence, no inner place for hearing the Lord is never going to be of much use in the service of the Lord, and mark you, it must be the Lord, and we must be very careful that we do not give even good men and good writers the place that the Lord ought to have. There is a time when we must sweep our books aside, when we must shut ourselves up from the voices of men, when we must get quiet with the Lord and listen, and more, we must seek to cultivate, by the grace of God, the ear that is always open to the Lord even when all the other sounds are around us. It is difficult, yet not impossible, that in the raging of the street and the rush of business life the Lord should say something; but He will only speak to those who recognize the value of listening to the Lord and who are giving Him His place of silence to speak when possible. The ear to hear the Lord when all other sounds and voices are around us is prepared and trained in these times of detachment which the Lord demands, and against which the devil is eternally active to capture the ear again.
Now, that is elementary but tremendously important. You and I know, never mind how spiritually mature we are - the one object of the devil is to capture our ear from God, to make it impossible for us to have the silent hour and the silent ear for God. The pressing in, and all the things which happen just when you have decided to have a little quiet time; then it is you have to fight for the ear...you know it is true. Do you see, there is something with that; the undoing of the work of the devil.... is God having your ear.
A few months ago I read where one of the well known pastors of our day (a really good one at that) announced he was taking a leave of absence from his church so that he could make sure he is in the will of God. In the oil patch we call that a maintence shutdown, always costly, but a must happen.
Divine stillness is an experience that we enter into through and by an inner training of the Soul, by not only ceasing from sin and various forms of worldly or churchly ambition, but by being conquered by divine providence, and the dealings of the Holy Spirit, and becoming subdued by the Holy Spirit. " Be still and know that I am God " being subdued into that Holy hush is like the breathless quietness of a serene sunset, after the storms of the day have sunken below the horizon. After the clouds have melted into the invisible upper air, after the tired winds have sunken below the whisper point, after the ripples have been smoothed out from the fretted surface of the sea, and the almost audible silence of the evening stars speak down into our listening hearts and souls and minds.
Zachariah described the restoration of Israel, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the great joy of the people, and concluded by saying, " Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for He is lifted up out of His Holy Habitation. It is as true, in this hour as it was in that ancient time, that all flesh is to be silent when the Lord is lifted up.
When Elijah was praying in the secret cave in the mountain of Horeb, he had to pass through the cyclone of rending rocks, and the fire of the forked lighting, and the echoing of the thunder that turned every mountain glen into a tongue, and when all things in nature and in the human had gone through their performance, it was then that down from the heavens fell the Divines Stillness, softer than the tread of the falling snow, and out of that stillness from the very life of God there came supernatural endowments that made Elijah the fit agent to commission prophets and kings, and also fitted him with immortal wings to soar alive to the living and eternal Lord.
We need our minds kept so serene in God, that out of Himself, the heavenly dew will distill upon us, as out of the quiet night, sweet moisture gathers on the grass.
I fear that our own religious ambitions and zeal keep us from knowing the vastness, the truth and the sweet wisdom in the nature and the ways of God.
But it is God himself that must put his Holy Silence upon us, it is when He says, " Be still " that still-ness comes. It was when Jesus spoke that the winds ceased, and so our rest comes from Him, And it must be spoken from His Heart into ours.
Jesus knew that it was time for Himself and His disciples to rest for a while and just be still.
Dearly beloved if the Master had to have quite time, then ought not we as His children do the same!
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