In my last post, I wrote of my concern that during Advent we are prone to look back at Jesus' first coming and to neglect seeking the living Christ to come again in power to reform and revive His Church:
Over the past few years, there’s been what seems to be an exponential proliferation of Advent devotionals available online. Now, don’t get me wrong: some of these may indeed be good and helpful. However, it’s all too easy for us to become nostalgic about these things… we begin to look back at Christ’s first coming with a sickly sentimentality. And, before we know it, we may be lulled into seeing Immanuel as set in historical concrete in the manger at Bethlehem and the Holy Spirit as set in historical concrete in the upper room in Jerusalem! When we do so, for all intents and purposes – dare I put it this way – are we not in grave danger of emasculating the Holy One of Israel?! (See Psalm 78, especially verses 40-43ff.)...
In that post, I included John Newton's "Savior, Visit Thy Plantation" taken from the “The Psalmody: A Collection of Hymns for Public and Social Worship." Once again today I'm including another hymn from "The Psalmody..." in the hope God might use it to stir us up to importunate prayer for the Spirit of God.
By importunate prayer I mean the type of prayer that was taking place in the upper room in Acts 1 & 2: — prayer that owns our insufficiency and confesses God's sufficiency; prayer that pleads for God's Holy Spirit to descend in Pentecostal power upon Christ's Church; prayer that understands all of our obedient "tabernacle building" apart from the Presence of God leaves us sorely lacking (see Exodus 40... "So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle..."). As Mrs. Ramsey wrote in her hymn I've cited below:
We build this house with toil and care;
But vain the labor of our hands;
Unless thy presence meet us here,
An empty monument it stand...
O! my friends, do we seek the cloud and the glory?! Do we miss the Beloved?! Are we sick of love?! Does God's Spirit within us provoke us to cry out with Moses, "O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance" (Exodus 34:9)? Can we really stop satisfied with an empty monument?
Or, are we more like those whom John Elias described? Are we easy without God's presence?!
It is a dark night on the Church, the depth of winter, when she is sleepy and ready to die, and the Lord is hiding his face in the ordinances, and when only a few are crying out for his appearance, and those scarcely audible in their call! It is still more awful, if while they are asleep they should think themselves awake, and imagine that they see the sun at midnight. Yet such are the circumstances of the Church generally. Yea, the darkness of night I say, is upon her, and she is slumbering, having lost the presence of her Lord, and so unhappy as not to know the loss she has sustained! ...
O brethren, be not easy without his presence! I believe that some of you know the difference between the shining of his countenance and every other thing. I often fear that many are now in the churches that know no difference between the hiding and the shining of his countenance. O be not satisfied with any thing instead of him – fluency, or any gift in prayer, or preaching! His countenance pre-eminently excels all things as to light, strength virtue, fruit and the consequences hereafter. It extracts the heart out of the creature, and draws the soul heavenward. It conveys the affections to the things where Christ sits, it causes the traffic of the soul to be in heaven, seeking a better country than any here below. They are made pilgrims here, their treasure and home being in the heavenly world.
from "John Elias: Life, Letters and Essays” by Edward Morgan (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1973, revised edition published in one volume, 241-242 & 247. (For more, please see my posts on my other site here and here.)
Following the hymn below, I've included a necessary and urgent exhortation from Charles Spurgeon — words which are as timely today as when they were when they were first spoken almost 140 years ago. (A little note on that... it is true that God's Spirit is sovereign, and yet are we for the most part oblivious to the glorious fullness that is in Jesus now? Do we perhaps not presently enjoy more of a realization of Christ's fullness — "many a Pentecostal shower" — because we do not understand we can ask, seek, and knock for God's blessed Holy Spirit? James 4:2c You do not have, because you do not ask.)
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Within Thy Courts, O God, To-Day
by V.G. Ramsey
Hymn # 856 in the “The Psalmody...”
(Freewill Baptist Printing Establishment, Dover, N.H., 1853)
Within thy courts, O God, to-day
We come with songs of joy and praise;
Accept our homage, here, we pray,
The humble tribute which we raise;
And let the blessings of thy grace
Descend, and consecrate this place.
Thou, who of old didst condescend
Between the cherubim to dwell,
Such tokens of thy presence send,
That future ages yet may tell
The wonders of thy matchless grace,
Displayed within this holy place.
We build this house with toil and care;
But vain the labor of our hands;
Unless thy presence meet us here,
An empty monument it stand:
O, let the visions of thy face
Adorn and sanctify this place.
Here by the Spirit's mighty power,
O, may our souls be often stirred;
And many a pentecostal shower
Attend the preaching of thy word;
While listening throngs, with wonder, trace
Thy glories in this sacred place.
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"For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell." Colossians 1:19
“And of His fullness we have all received, and Grace for Grace.” John 1:16.
I. My first point this morning is this––THERE IS A GLORIOUS FULLNESS IN JESUS. . . .
II. The next encouraging fact is that THE FULLNESS IS IN JESUS NOW. "It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell." The glory of the past exercises a depressing influence upon many Christians. "We have heard with our ears and our fathers have told us the wondrous things which You did in their day and in the old time before them." But we dolefully complain that the golden age of Christianity is over—its heroic times are matter of history. Indeed, this feeling is transformed to fact, for scarcely any Church now existing realizes that it can do what its first promoters did! All appear to be quite sure that these are bad times and but little is to be done in them. We do not expect, nowadays, to find a Methodist so full of fire as the first field preachers. The Quakers are never as fanatical and even the Primitives are not ranters now! The old reproach has ceased because the old ardor which provoked it has cooled down. So far so bad.
I see grave cause for sorrow in all this. A people are in an evil case when all their heroism is historical. We read the biographies of former worthies with great wonder and respect. But we do not attempt to follow in their steps with equal stride. Why not? It has pleased the Father that in Jesus all fullness should dwell, a fullness for Paul, a fullness for Luther, a fullness for Whitfield [sic], and blessed be God, a fullness for me and a fullness for you! All that Jesus has given forth has not exhausted Him! Christianity has not lost its pristine strength—we have lost our faith—there's the calamity! Oh, ignoble sons of glorious sires, you have degenerated, but not your Master! And if, even in your degeneracy, you would cast yourselves upon your unchanging God, you would rise to more than the strength of your sires and do yet greater things that they!
The fullness of Jesus is not changed. Then why are our works so feebly done? Pentecost, is that to be a tradition? The reforming days, are these to be only memories? I see no reason why we should not have a greater Pentecost than Peter saw and a Reformation deeper in its foundations, and truer in its building up than all the reforms which Luther or Calvin achieved! We have the same Christ, remember that! The times are altered, but Jesus is the Eternal and time touches Him not. “But we are not such men as they.” What? Cannot God make us such? Are we weaker than they? The fitter to be instruments for the mighty God! Away with the cowardice which thinks the past is never to be outdone! Is not the Lord of Hosts with us? Is anything too hard for Him? We must labor to eclipse the past as the sunlight eclipses the brightness of the stars!
The mass of professors have their eyes only on the future. The good times are coming, by-and-by, but they are not here yet. We look forward with much hope to the golden age that is to be, when we shall see the fullness of Jesus and nations will be born in a day! Brothers and Sisters, does my text say, “It pleased the Father that in Him all fullness shall one day dwell”? No, but, “in Him should all fullness dwell.” Whatever has been done can be done now—and whatever shall yet be done, can be done today, by His Grace. Our laziness puts off the work of conquest. Our self-indulgence procrastinates. Our cowardice and lack of faith make us dote upon the millennium instead of hearing the Spirit’s voice today! Happy days would begin from this hour if the Church would but awake and put on her Strength, for in her Lord all fatness dwells.
When the Son of Man comes, shall He find faith on the earth? Some doubting ones say, “We do not wonder that there is success in such a place,” but we cannot have it. We hear of earnest ministers and we conclude that where they labor God will send the blessing, but not to our ministry. We conclude that when yonder woman gathers the young people around her, it is no wonder that blessing comes. Does Christ depend on ministers or on holy women? Have you said, “Alas, I cannot have the blessing.” Why not? How dare you limit the Holy One of Israel? You who dwell in towns where all is cold around you, do you despair? Is it in your minds that Christ is dependent upon the circumstances in which He has placed His servants? “It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell.” What if the servants are empty—their Master is not! If the means of Grace lack power, Grace from above is still Omnipotent. Only fly to the Fountain and the dried up streams need not distress you.
Furthermore, our Churches believe that there is a great fullness in Christ and that sometimes they ought to enjoy it. The progress of Christianity is to be by tides which ebb and flow. There are to be revivals like the spring and these must alternate with long lethargies like the winter. O accursed Unbelief, will you always pervert the Truth of God? Will you never understand this Word of God—“It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell”? It is not the Lord’s purpose that a fullness should reside in Jesus during revivals and then withdraw. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! The highest state of revival should be the normal condition of the Church. When her martyrs are most self-sacrificing, her missionaries most daring, her ministers most bold, her members most consecrated, she is, even then, below her standard—she has not fully reached her high calling—to come down from her position would be sin!
God grant us Grace to feel that we have not to drink of an intermittent spring, nor to work for Christ with an occasional industry—but as all fullness dwells in Him—it is ours to believe that today we can have all the blessing of a true revival! That today we can go forward in the power of God! That at this very hour we lack for nothing which can lift the Church into her highest condition of spirituality and power! God grant us to receive Grace for Grace today!
Reference: "The Fullness of Christ the Treasury of the Saints" (No. 1169), A Sermon delivered on Lord's Day Morning, April 19, 1874 by C. H. Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. Accessed 12/13/13 from http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols19-21/chs1169.pdf / HT: Daffyd Morris, who cited a portion of Spurgeon's sermon in his first address "Why Should Jesus Send His Spirit? (1)," given at the 2007 Reformation and Revival Fellowship Conference, which you can access here.
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Luke 11:
1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread,
4 and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
5 And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; 7 and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’?
8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. 9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?
13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
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