Faces of Beauty 1 -
all for Abba

"Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?" — Job 38:16

 

Some things in nature must remain a mystery to the most intelligent and enterprising investigators.

Human knowledge has bounds beyond which it cannot pass.

Universal knowledge is for God alone.

If this be so in the things which are seen and temporal, I may rest assured
that it is even more so in matters spiritual and eternal.

Why, then, have I been torturing my brain with speculations as to destiny and will, fixed fate, and human responsibility?

These deep and dark truths I am no more able to comprehend
than to find out the depth which coucheth beneath, from which old ocean draws her watery stores.

Why am I so curious to know the reason of my Lord's providences, the motive of his actions, the design of his visitations?

Shall I ever be able to clasp the sun in my fist, and hold the universe in my palm?
yet these are as a drop of a bucket compared with the Lord my God.

Let me not strive to understand the infinite, but spend my strength in love. 

What I cannot gain by intellect I can possess by affection, and let that suffice me.

I cannot penetrate the heart of the sea, but I can enjoy the healthful breezes which sweep over its bosom, and I can sail over its blue waves with propitious winds.

If I could enter the springs of the sea, the feat would serve no useful purpose either to myself or to others, it would not save the sinking bark, or give back the drowned mariner to his weeping wife and children;

neither would my solving deep mysteries avail me a single whit, for the least love to God, and the simplest act of obedience to him, are better than the profoundest knowledge.

My Lord, I leave the infinite to thee, and pray thee to put far from me such a love for the tree of knowledge as might keep me from the tree of life.

written by Charles Spurgeon
original post can be found at:  www.heartlight.org

"I will; be thou clean." — Mark 1:41

 

Primeval darkness heard the Almighty fiat, "light be," and straightway light was,
and the word of the Lord Jesus is equal in majesty to that ancient word of power. Redemption like Creation has its word of might.
Jesus speaks and it is done.
Leprosy yielded to no human remedies,
but it fled at once at the Lord's "I will."
The disease exhibited no hopeful signs or tokens of recovery, nature contributed nothing to its own healing, but the unaided word effected the entire work on the spot and for ever.
The sinner is in a plight more miserable than the leper;
let him imitate his example and go to Jesus,
"beseeching him and kneeling down to him."
Let him exercise what little faith he has, even though it should go no further than "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean";
and there need be no doubt as to the result of the application.
Jesus heals all who come, and casts out none.
In reading the narrative in which our morning's text occurs, it is worthy of
devout notice that Jesus touched the leper.
This unclean person had broken through the regulations of the ceremonial law
and pressed into the house, but Jesus so far from chiding him broke through the law himself in order to meet him.
He made an interchange with the leper, for while he cleansed him, he contracted by that touch a Levitical defilement.
Even so Jesus Christ was made sin for us, although in himself he knew no sin,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
O that poor sinners would go to Jesus, believing in the power of his blessed substitutionary work, and they would soon learn the power of his gracious touch.
That hand which multiplied the loaves, which saved sinking Peter, which upholds afflicted saints, which crowns believers, that same hand will touch every seeking sinner, and in a moment make him clean.

The love of Jesus is the source of salvation.
He loves,
he looks,
he touches us,
WE LIVE.

by Charles Spurgeon
from the original post at www.heartlight.org