_The burning heart._
Jesus came to the two disciples, and after He had reproved them and
said: "Oh! fools, and slow of heart to believe," He began to open the
Scriptures to them, and to tell them of all the wonderful things the
prophets had taught. Then their eyes were opened, and they began to
understand the Scriptures. They saw that it was true that it was
prophesied that Christ must rise. As He talked, there came out from
Him--the living risen One--a mighty influence, and it rested upon them,
and they began to feel their hearts burn within them with joy and
gladness.
You still say perhaps: "That is the stage we want to come to." No; God
forbid you should stop there. You may get in that third stage--the
burning heart--and yet something is still wanting--the revelation of
Christ. The disciples had had a blessed experience of His divine powers,
but He had not revealed Himself, and oh! how often it is that at
Conventions and in churches, and in meetings and in blessed fellowship
with God's saints, our hearts burn within us. These are precious
experiences of the working of God's grace and Spirit, and yet there is
something wanting. What is that? Jesus Himself has been working upon us,
and the power of his risen life has touched us, but we cannot say, "I
have met Him. He has made Himself known to me." Oh, the difference
between a burning heart, which becomes cold after a time, which comes by
fits and starts, and the blessed revelation of Jesus Himself as my
Saviour, taking charge of me and blessing me and keeping me every day!
This is the stage of
_The satisfied heart._
Oh my brother, my sister! It is what I ask for you, and it is what I am
sure you ask for yourself. I ask it for myself. Lord Jesus! may we know
Thee in thy divine glory as the risen One, our Jesus, our Beloved and
our mighty One. Oh! if there are any sad ones who cannot take this in,
and who say, "I have never known the joy of religion yet"--listen, we
are going to tell you how you can. All will center round this one thing,
that just as a little child lives day by day in the arms of its mother,
and grows up year by year under a mother's eye, it is a possibility that
you can live every day and hour of your life in fellowship with the Holy
Jesus.
_He will do it for you._
Come, and let your sad heart begin to hope. Will He reveal Himself? He
did it to the disciples and He will do it to you. Perhaps there are
some who have got beyond the sad heart and who yet feel, "I have not
got what I want." If you throw open your heart and give up everything
but just believing and allowing Him to do what He wants, it will come.
God be praised! it will come.
_Jesus will reveal Himself._
Perhaps you have arrived at the stage of the burning heart, and can tell
of many blessed experiences, but somehow there is a worm at the root.
The experiences do not last, and the heart is so changeable. Oh come, my
beloved! Follow Christ. Say, "Jesus, reveal Thyself that we may know
Thee Thyself. We ask not only to drink of the living water, we want the
fountain. We ask not only to bathe ourselves in the light, we want the
Sun of Righteousness within our hearts. We ask not only to know Thee,
who hast touched us and warmed our hearts and blessed us, but we want to
know that we have the unchangeable Jesus dwelling within our hearts and
abiding with us forevermore."
Now comes the question which I really wanted to put,--What are the
conditions under which our blessed Lord reveals Himself? Or, put it this
way,--To whom is it that Jesus will reveal Himself? We have only to see
how he dealt with these disciples, and we get the answer. What is the
answer? First of all I think I find here that Christ revealed Himself to
those disciples
_Who had given up everything for Him._
He had said to them: "Forsake all and follow Me," and they had done it.
With all their feebleness and all their unfaithfulness they followed
Christ to the end. He said to them: "Ye have continued with Me in My
temptations, and I appoint you a kingdom, as I have received a kingdom
from My Father." They were not perfect men, but they would have died for
Him. They loved Him, they obeyed Him, they followed Him. They had left
all, and for three years they had been following hard after Christ. You
say "Tell me what Christ wants of me, if I am to have his wonderful
presence. Tell me what is the character of the man to whom Christ will
reveal Himself in this highest and fullest way?" I answer: "It is the
one who is ready to forsake all and to follow Him." If Christ is to give
Himself wholly to me, He must know that He has me wholly for Himself;
and I trust God will give grace that these words spoken about the
consecration and the surrender, not only of all evil, but of many lawful
things, and even, if necessary, of life itself, may lead us to
understand what the demand is that Jesus makes upon us.
The motto of the Cape General Mission is,
"_God first._"
In one sense that is a beautiful motto, and yet I am not always
satisfied with it, because it is a motto that is often misunderstood.
God first may mean "I" second, something else third, and something else
fourth. God is thus first in order, but still God becomes one of a
series of powers, and that is not the place God wants. The meaning of
the words, "God first" is really "God all; God everything;" and that is
what Christ wants. To be willing to give up everything, to submit to
Christ to teach him what to say and what to do, is the first mark of the
man to whom Christ will come. Are you not ready to take this step and
say: "Jesus! I do give up everything; I have given up everything; reveal
Thyself."
Oh, brother! oh, sister! do not hesitate. Speak it out in your heart,
and let this be the time in which a new sacrifice shall be laid at the
feet of the blessed Lamb of God.
There is a second thought. There is first the idea of having forsaken
all to follow Him; of having given up everything in obedience to Him,
and living just a life of simple love and obedience. But there is a
second thing needed in the man who is to have this full revelation of
Christ. He must be
_Convicted of his unbelief._
"Oh! fools, and slow of heart to believe what the prophets have said."
Oh! brother, sister, if we could have a sight of the amount of unbelief
in the hearts of God's children, barring the door and closing the heart
against Christ, how we should stand astonished and ashamed! When there
is not unbelief but where there is faith, Christ cannot help coming in.
He cannot help coming where there is a living faith, a full faith. The
heart is opened, the heart is prepared; and as naturally as water runs
into a hollow place, so naturally Christ must come into a heart that is
full of faith. What is the hindrance with some earnest souls, who say:
"I have given myself up to the Lord Jesus. I have done it often, and by
His grace I am doing it every day, and God knows how earnestly and
really I am doing it, and I have the sanction of God upon it, I know God
has blessed me"? They have not been convicted of their unbelief. "Oh!
fools, and slow of heart to believe." Do you know what Christ said about
a man calling his brother a fool? Yet here the loving Son of God could
find no other word to speak to His beloved disciples: "Oh! fools, and
slow of heart to believe." You want the Lord Jesus to give you this full
revelation of Himself? Are you willing to acknowledge that you are a
fool for never having believed in Him? "Lord Jesus, it is my own fault.
There Thou art, longing to have possession of me. There Thou hast been
with Thy faithful promises waiting to reveal Thyself."
Did you ever hear of a man loving another and not longing to reveal
himself? Christ longs to reveal Himself, but He cannot on account of
our unbelief. May God convict us of our unbelief that we may get
utterly ashamed and broken down, and cry, "Oh, my God, what is this,
this heart of unbelief actually throwing a barrier across the door
that Christ cannot step in, blinding my eyes that I cannot see Jesus,
though he is so near? Here He has been for ten or twenty years, from
time to time giving me the burning heart, enjoying the experience of a
little of His love and grace, and yet I have not had the revelation of
Him, taking possession of my heart and dwelling with me in unbroken
continuity." Oh! may God convict us of unbelief. Do let us believe
because all things are possible to him that believes. That is God's
word, and this blessing, receiving the revelation of Jesus, can come
only to those who learn to believe and to trust him.
There is another mark of those to whom this special revelation of Christ
will come, and that is,
_They do not rest until they obtain it._
You know the story. Their hearts were burning as they drew nigh to the
place they were going to, and Christ made as if He were going farther.
He put them to the test, and if they had allowed Him quietly to go on,
if they had been content with the experience of the burning heart, they
would have lost something infinitely better. But they were not content
with it. They were not content to go home to the disciples that night
and say, "Oh, what a blessed afternoon we have had! What wonderful
teaching we have had!" No! The burning heart and the blessed experience
just made them say, "Lord, abide with us," and they compelled Him to
come in. They constrained Him to come in.
It always reminds me of the story of Jacob, "I will not let Thee go,
except Thou bless me." That is the spirit that prepares us for the
revelation of Jesus. Oh! my dear friend, has this been the spirit in
which we have looked upon the wonderful blessing that we have sometimes
heard of? "Oh! my Lord Jesus, though I do not understand it, though I
cannot grasp it, though my struggles avail nothing, I am not going to
let Thee go. If it is possible for a sinner on earth to have Jesus
every day, every hour, and every moment in resurrection power dwelling
in his heart, shining within him, filling him with love and joy,--if
that is possible, I want it."
_Is that your language?_
Oh! come then and say: "Lord Jesus, I cannot let Thee go except Thou
bless me." The question is asked so often: "What is the cause of the
feeble life of so many Christians?" What is really the matter? What is
actually the want?
How little the Church responds to Christ's call! how little the Church
is what Christ would have her to be! What is the cause of all the
trouble? Various answers may be given, but there is one answer which
includes all the other answers, and that is, each believer wants the
personal
_Full revelation of a personal Christ_
as an indwelling Lord, as a satisfying portion. When the Lord Jesus was
here upon earth, what was it that distinguished His disciples from other
people? He took them away from their fish-nets, and from their homes,
and He gathered them about Himself, and they knew Jesus. He was their
Master, and guarded them, and they followed Him. And what is to make a
difference between Christ's disciples--not those who are just hoping to
get to heaven, but Christ's whole-hearted disciples--what is to make a
difference between them and other people? It is this, to be in
fellowship with Jesus--every hour of the day; and just as Christ upon
earth was able to keep those people with Him for three years, day by
day, so
_Christ is able_
in heaven now to do what He could not do when He was on earth--to keep
in the closest fellowship with every believer throughout the whole
world. Glory be to God! You know that text in Ephesians: "He that
descended is the same also that ascended, that He might fill all
things." Why was my Lord Jesus taken up to heaven away from the life of
earth? Because the life of earth is a life confined to localities, but
the life in heaven is a life in which there is no limit and no bound and
no locality, and Christ was taken up to heaven, that, in the power of
God, of the omnipresent God, He might be able to fill every individual
here and be with every individual believer.
That is what my heart wants to realize by faith; that is a possibility,
that is a promise, that is my birthright, and I want to have it, and I
want by the grace of God to say, "Jesus, I will not rest until Thou hast
revealed Thyself fully to my soul."
There are often very blessed experiences in the Christian life in what I
call the third stage--the stage of the burning heart. Do you know what
another great mark of that stage is? Delight in God's word. How did the
disciples get their burning hearts? By that strange opening of the
Scripture to them. He made it all look different,--new,--and they saw
what they had never seen before. They could not help feeling,
_How wonderful_,
how heavenly was that teaching. Oh! there are many Christians who find
the best time of the day is the time when they can get with their
Bibles, and who love nothing so much as to get a new thought; and as a
diamond digger rejoices when he has found a diamond, or a gold digger
when he has found a nugget, they delight when they get from the Bible
some new thought, and they feed upon it. Yet with all that interest in
God's word, and with all that stirring of the heart with joy, when they
go into business or attend to their daily duties, there is still
something wanting.
We must come away from all the manifold and multifarious blessings that
Jesus can bestow from time to time, to the blessed unity of that
one--that Jesus makes Himself known, Jesus Himself is willing to make
Himself known. Oh! if I were to ask, "Is not this just what you and I
want, and what many of us have been longing for?" I am sure you would
answer,
"_That is what I want._"