They that Love the Lord Shall Be as the Sun   (29:52)

Judges 5:31a.  So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.

Matthew 13:43.  Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

I Corinthians 16:22.  If any man loveth not the Lord, let him be anathema. Maranatha.

Philippians 3:12.  Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

Christ is the most wonderful subject to dwell on, to think about, to meditate on.  Do I love Him?  If I don’t love Him, it’s because I haven’t believed in Him sufficiently.  I haven’t walked with Him far enough.  Oh, “the love of Jesus, what it is, none but His loved ones know.”  But the Bible, the New Testament, says such marvelous things about the love of Jesus.

Some time ago, the Lord gave a message something to this effect: He said, “Beloved, the time is coming when Jesus Christ must be manifested in our meetings far more wonderfully than we have yet known.  And when that happens, it’ll be because the saints of God have drunk of that Fountain, have been set on fire with His love.  It will be those who love Him.”  That’s what the Bible says: “They that love the Lord shall be like the sun when he ariseth in his strength.”

Now, we know what that means, “the righteous shall shine forth like the sun.”  What else does God refer to but the manifestation of Jesus?  He’s got to come by His saints, after all.  And when we come into a Holy Ghost meeting like we do this morning, and our hearts are all burning with the love of God, what is it but Jesus—Jesus manifesting Himself?  And who do you suppose enjoys the meeting better, you or He?  He is the One that gave His life.  He purchased a church with His own blood “that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such a thing.”  And the Apostle Paul says, “I’m talking about a great mystery.”  He uses that illustration of husbands loving their wives as their own flesh, their own bodies.  But he says, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

No, Jesus cannot manifest Himself in a heart that doesn’t love Him.  You may produce all kinds of righteousness in your own estimation, and zeal, and all that.  Didn’t Peter do that when he said, “I’ll go with you into prison and into death”?  And somehow the Lord just brushed him aside.  He knew that that wouldn’t stand in the hour of testing.  But after Peter had learned his lesson, Jesus instead of rebuking him said, “Simon Peter, lovest thou me?”  Now we’ve found the foundation: “Do you love me?  Now feed my lambs, feed my sheep.  Now I can make an apostle out of you.” 

And that’s the question this morning: “Do I love You, Jesus?  Has the Holy Ghost been able to reveal to me the love of God?  Has He been able to set my heart on fire with the love of God?”

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That’s why I like that song “O Sweet Wonder.”  And I see people sing it wrong.  They sing, “How I love Him.”  It doesn’t say that.  It says, “How I love Thee.”  I’m in Thy presence.  I’m serenading the Lover of my soul.  Does He know the difference?  Oh, yes.  And He doesn’t care for cultured voices.  You may have a cracked voice, but when it comes from the heart and you sing a song like that, it rings the bells in heaven.  And that wonderful Bridegroom, He’ll brush aside the choirs of angels, and He’ll listen to— “Let me hear your voice” “My beloved, My dove, My undefiled.” 

And how He comes to visit you at night, and comes to visit you in the daytime—oh, how Jesus longs for hearts that love Him!  He’s got plenty of people on this earth that love to advertize their zeal, and their faith, and what-not.  How we love to advertize our spirituality!  But the bride isn’t like that.  All she cares is that He knows.  And she loves to be hidden, and to perform her work in a way that her left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does, because He knows.  How different is that service!  “If any man love Me…”  Jesus knows.  Christ knows those who love Him, not by what they say in the meeting but how they live outside the meeting, how they steal away from the crowd and from the gabbing rag-chewers to be alone with God.

Jesus knows.  Oh, He finds them quickly, and He knows them today.  And beloved, those who give themselves like that to Christ will find that He desires—His heart is yearning, is burning—to give Himself to them.  That’s going to make the difference when Jesus comes.  That’s the “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”  That’s why the apostle says, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed.”

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When all of Israel had backslidden and defeated Moses and defeated Almighty God so that God’s sentence was to destroy them all, the love of Moses for God won the fight.  He said, “Lord, show me now Thy glory.”  “How shall it be known that I’ve found grace in Thy sight except Thou go with me?” 

Oh, listen, you can bind Jesus to yourself.  He can’t get away from you.  You can bind Him to yourself.  You can eat His flesh and drink His blood.  And then the life of God will flow.  You will live no more.  The life of God will flow, and you’ll never think of yourself anymore.  It will be Christ and not yourself.  You will “shine like the sun.”  Oh, “they that love the Lord...!”

…And oh, to know that love!  Beloved, that’s our lack.  We occupy ourselves like Peter with so many things.  We like to reflect credit on ourselves.  We labor and we fuss to become spiritual.  And, oh, if we would labor and fuss to love Jesus, how simplified our lives would be.

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How sensitive His heart is!  There never was a heart of love like the heart of Jesus, and that love is mine.  And does He care what I talk about, or how I talk?  The very twang of my voice will either bless Him or grieve Him.  “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.”  Why, He’s the Spirit of love.  He’s the love of Christ, the burning flame which all the waters in all the oceans cannot quench.

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But how much deeper, how much more powerfully arresting must the love of Jesus Christ affect me when it has entered my heart, when it has possessed me, when it has gripped me!  And, beloved, that’s what Paul means when he says, “He has apprehended me.”  Jesus, have I given You a chance to apprehend me like that?  Or have I never given You time enough to speak to me lovingly?  “The voice of my beloved that knocketh” at night, when everything is asleep, and the whole city is bathed in silence and in darkness, there’s the voice of my Beloved.  He says, “My head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of the night.”  And she is so taken up with her own adornments, “Well, how can I get up?  I’ll soil my feet.” 

But He looks through the lattice, He knocks again.  Has He gripped you?  Has the love of Jesus Christ arrested your attention?  Have you awakened?  Have you opened your eyes and looked upon Jesus until your heart has been set on fire?  You can’t escape it.  Oh, if you just give Him a chance!  And if you’re the worst sinner in all the world, I tell you, that love of Jesus will grip you.  It gripped the Apostle Paul, even though he says he was “the chief of sinners.”  And what did he do?  “One thing I do…”  And he calls upon all those who pride themselves as being perfect to do as he does: “forget the things that are behind.”  “The prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” lies before you!  It’s to “know Jesus and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.”  How little we know of that!

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“If we be dead with Him…”  But what fellowship, what fellowship!  “If any man love Me, he’ll keep My words.”  “He that hath My commandments and keepeth them…”  And how simple are these commands.  That’s why we cast them aside.  We’re like Adam; we’ve been vaccinated with the pride of Lucifer, and we want to be like gods.  And that’s why we write books about the glories of heaven, and how we’re going to flutter around with the angels, and reign, and do all these mighty things.

But, beloved, when we’ve been “transformed by the renewing of our mind,” there will be a cry in our souls to humble ourselves, to take His yoke.  We’ll find no fellowship with Jesus—you don’t find Jesus upon this earth—unless you get down.  You find Him in the Valley of Humility.  You find Him on the cross.  “Even so, he that eateth Me shall live by Me.”  Here is the Lamb that was sacrificed, and He calls upon me to present my body a living sacrifice—not to be a boss, not to be great, but to come down, to learn of Him meekness, lowliness of heart.  How wonderful that God doesn’t ask great things of us, but quite the opposite: “Come down.”

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An illustration of the extravagance of even a merely human love: a million-dollar Christmas present.    (at 5:41)

gutes Geschäft: good bargain

(ein gutes Geschäft: a good stroke of business)

A quote from Das Lied von der Glocke (The Song of the Bell) by Friedrich Schiller.  The full poem and translation is available here.

Errötend folgt er ihren Spuren
Und ist von ihrem Gruß beglückt,
Das Schönste sucht er auf den Fluren,
Womit er seine Liebe schmückt.
O zarte Sehnsucht, süßes Hoffen, (HRW: O zartes Sehnen, süßes Hoffen,)
Der ersten Liebe goldne Zeit, (HRW: goldne Liebe, goldne Zeiten,)
Das Auge sieht den Himmel offen,
Es schwelgt das Herz in Seligkeit; (HRW: Es schwelgt das Herz voll Seligkeit;)
O daß sie ewig grünen bliebe,
Die schöne Zeit der jungen Liebe!

Encrimsoned, now, her steps he traces,
Her greeting’s like a joy new-born,
The fairest flower in field embraces
Wherewith his loved one to adorn.
O sweetest hope! O tender longing!
The earliest love’s first golden time!
The eye, it sees the heavens thronging
With rapt’rous sights and scenes sublime:
O that they would be never-ending,
These vernal days, with lovelight blending.

A quote, somewhat altered, from stanzas 2 and 3 of Die rechte Liebestreue by Philipp Spitta.

Denn wisse, Seele, des geringen, kleinsten Dienstes
nicht der Herr vergisst,
weil bei dem kleinsten Dienst am reinsten
das Herz von eitler Selbstsucht ist.

O sage nicht: In großen Proben
Werd’  ich wohl treu vor Ihm besteh’n!
Das hörst du Petrus auch geloben
und musst ihn dennoch weinen sehn.
Drum lerne recht die Treu im Kleinen,
in kleinen Kämpfen übe dich,
sonst wirst du bald wie Petrus weinen
um große Untreu bitterlich.

For know, O soul, the Lord does not forget
the least and smallest service.
For it is in the smallest service
that the heart is most free from vain selfishness.

Say not in great trials,
“I certainly shall be true to Him.”
You hear Peter vowing the same
and yet you see him crying.
Therefore learn to be faithful in small things,
practice in the small battles
otherwise you soon, like Peter,
will cry out your heart over your great faithlessness.

Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee, a hymn by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153): “The love of Jesus, what it is, none but his loved ones know.”

A tract by Mrs. Flower: “Seven Years of Fellowship”

A secular song, Somewhere, composed in 1906 by Charles K. Harris

I Am His, and He Is Mine, a hymn by George W. Robinson, 1876:

His forever, only His; Who the Lord and me shall part?
Ah, with what a rest of bliss Christ can fill the loving heart!
Heav’n and earth may fade and flee, firstborn light in gloom decline;
But while God and I shall be, I am His, and He is mine.
But while God and I shall be, I am His, and He is mine.

O Sweet Wonder, or rather, Jesus the Son of God — a hymn by Garfield T. Haywood.

Brother Lawrence (1610 – 1691), whose relationship with God is recorded in the little book, The Practice of the Presence of God.

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