March 13, 2016
Worship
Let them neglect Thy glory Lord,
Who never knew Thy grace,
But our loud songs shall still record
The wonders of Thy praise.
We raise our shouts, 0 God, to Thee,
And send them to Thy throne,
All glory to the united Three,
The undivided One.
‘Twas He, and we’ll adore His Name,
That form’d us by a word,
‘Tis He restores our ruined frame,
Salvation to the Lord!
Hosanna! let the earth and skies
Repeat the joyful sound,
Rock, hills, and vales reflect the voice
In one eternal round.
Isaac Watts, 1709
( tune: “At The Cross” )
Jesus Only - Mark 9:8
This was the last sight the disciples had upon the mountain, and it seems to me to have been the best. They saw “Jesus only.” Jesus was often with his people; he was usually with his disciples; but they did not often notice him as “Jesus only.” They probably did so, in this case, because he had been accompanied by two great and notable personages, who, on a sudden, withdrew themselves; and then, “they saw no man any more, save Jesus only.” The disciples had seen their Lord transfigured, and attended by Moses and Elias, representatives of the law and the prophets. Suddenly, Moses and Elias vanished from their sight, and then, “they saw no man any more, save Jesus only.”
Beloved, we shall never see “Jesus only,” till, like the disciples, we have seen Moses and Elias, too. Never was there an eye which saw “Jesus only,” until it had first seen Moses. We must first pass under the rigors of Sinai, and the terrors of the law; we must first look upon the awful countenance of that dread lawgiver, whose words are thunder, and whose speech is fire; we must be made to tremble beneath the denunciations of the divine law, and stand abashed, astonished, and amazed, whilst the thunders of the wrath of God roll over our heads; we must see Moses first, or else we shall never see
“Jesus only.” We shall be trusting in our own self-righteousness, putting something with Christ,—making it Christ and self, until Moses comes in, and breaks self-righteousness into shivers, and stains self with the filth and mire of the streets. We must have the breaking down by Moses,—the smashing hand, the terrible strife that the law brings into the conscience,—or else we shall never know the sweetness of relying wholly upon Jesus, and placing our confidence in him alone.
And mark you, beloved, in another sense, we shall never see “Jesus only,” till we understand something about the prophets. We must see Elias, or else we shall not see “Jesus only.”
There are some men who have not seen Elias yet; they do not understand the prophecies. They think they perceive in the future a great progress of civilization, and they expect to see the spread of the gospel; they expect to hear of great agencies employed, of multitudes of ministers going forth to preach the Word, and of a gradual conversion of the world to the religion of Christ; but he who understands the prophets, and has seen Elias, believes not in the immediate conversion of the world, nor in universal peace; he believes in “Jesus only”, he expects that Jesus will first come; and, to him, the great hope of the future is the coming of the Son of man. “I know,” saith he, “that God shall overturn, and overturn, and overturn, until he shall come whose right it is to reign. I know that empires shall totter to their bases, and that the world shall reel to and fro in terror and alarm, until he shall appear whose name is Melchisedec, the King of righteousness, and the King of peace, who shall set his hand upon the floods, and his empire upon the rivers, and shall reign ‘from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.’” We shall not see “Jesus only,” as the world’s great Deliverer, as the sinners’ one Redeemer, as the earth’s bright Sun, as well as her Morning Star, until we have studied the prophecies, and seen how they all speak concerning Jesus, even of him who is yet to come. We shall see Moses and Elias first; and when we have seen them, their united testimony will lead us to see “Jesus only.”
- C.H. Spurgeon |
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