reverse his former corruptions, and called his people back to God. In the sphere of the Gentiles, see how God gave that wicked city Nineveh a second chance. Jonah’s pronounce ment of judgment stirred the entire populace, from the king to the beggar, to repentance. They lay before God in sackcloth and ashes, fasting and beseeching His mercy. God saw and heard, and spared the city with its multi tudes of ignorant, untaught people. The mission o f our Lord Jesus to earth was to estab lish the blood-bought right of every man to a second chance. By the Cross of our Lord Jesus, God has com mitted Himself to grant a new start to every sinner who comes in the name of Jesus. When you see Jesus taking hold of Zacchaeus, that despised little tax-collector vfrho had bled the people to build his own fortune, and trans forming him into an honorable, generous man, prepared to make amends fourfold for ail of his oppressions, and to consecrate half of his income to beneficent purposes, you see the remaking of a marred soul. When you see Jesus taking hold of impulsive, impetuous, swearing, un stable Simon, and making him into a rock of a man, capable of strong leadership in the early church, you have a demonstration of the efficacy of the s e c o n d chance. When you go down to the Water Street Mission in New York, or the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, and see wrecks of humanity being lifted by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ until the impact of their trans formed lives is felt throughout the country, you know that God is still in the saving business and still making vessels of honor out of marred clay. You may not have plunged to such depths of iniquity as Manasseh, you may not be guilty of the abominations of the Ninevites, you may not have fallen as low in the social scale as some of the derelicts in our rescue mis sions, but if you feel about yourself as one woman who wrote: "Believe me, I do not like the kind of person I am at all,” then Jesus Christ can make you over again, not only into the kind of person with whom you yourself can live comfortably, but one in His own likeness, well pleas ing to God. I can imagine some discouraged souls saying, “That is all right for folks who can make a go of it, but if I have made a failure not being a Christian, I am afraid I would make a bigger failure of trying to be a Christian, for the Christian standards are away higher than the ordinary standards.” For the sake of those who feel that way, I want to give some words of assurance. First, see how complete is the new start which Christ gives to the sinner who comes to Him. He rids him of the •ncumbrance of the past. No one can make good with the ball and chain of past sins fastened to him. Many a man has gone to the other end of the continent, or to the other side of the globe, in an attempt to get away from his past and try a new beginning. Jesus begins by forgiving all our sins, canceling the whole score, “ blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us.” Not only so, but He starts us in the new life with the advantage of a positive righteousness which is made over to us in His name. Now indeed a man who sets out with a com plete righteousness to his account has the jump a thou sand times over the one who is laden down with all his past sin. In addition, the sinner who comes to Jesus is bom again, “not of blood, nor of the w ill of the flesh, nor of the w ill of man, but of God.” Now just as I was bom of the flesh with a nature bent to sin, so by the new birth I secome possessor of a new nature which abhors sin and turns instinctively to the things of God. While that does lot altogether negate the old, sinful nature, it sets up a nighty opposition to it, an opposition well described by lie Apostle Paul: “ For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, ind the spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary lie one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that re would.” NOVEMBER, 1946
PRAYER More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. —Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
That is not the end. God does not give the repentant sinner his pardon and his new nature and send him forth to do the best he can with that. Even at that, the odds against us would be too great. But God Himself Is the fashioner of the new creature. Before, the sinner resisted God; would not allow Him to be the potter. He thought he was fashioning his own life, but actually he was being molded by the sin which he chose. Now "It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure,” and “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” “He cannot fail, for He is God; "Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with e x c e e d i n g joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.” You can trust the Lord Jesus to do the impossible. Still I hear some Christian say: “That all sounds very wonderful and very simple; but I accepted Christ as my Saviour, and I am not satisfied with my life. I do things that make me hate myself, and I become discouraged at my failures. There are so many habits and dispositions in me that are definitely un-Christlike, and the more I struggle against them, the worse they seem to grow. What am I to do?” First of all, let me say that it is encouraging for you to speak that way. Before you knew the Lord, those tem pers and habits and manners did not trouble you. The fact that you feel bad about them now is evidence that the Holy Spirit is dealing with you. That is part of the great Potter’s work. He must reveal to you the defects, make you earnestly desire their removal, and teach you that rare combination of trust and discipline by which Christian character is fashioned. Next, let me promise you that there is recovery for defeated Christians. The Old Testament saints frequently needed the. mercy of a second chance. God met Jacob at Bethel, offering to fashion him into a prince of God, but Jacob resisted the Potter’s hand, and practiced his own cunning ways with equally cunning Laban, till God took up again the marred vessel of Peniel, and subdued Jacob became Israel. Elijah lay under the juniper tree, a broken, discouraged, marred vessel, but God took him up 7 He cannot fail, He’s pledged His word; He cannot fail, He’ll see you through; He cannot fail, He’ll answer you.”
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