THREE APPLICATIONS

Part II (continued from Dec, 1976 issue)

But now, when we are under the preaching, or the reading of the Word, when there is no living mouth, we are called upon to make an application.

To be able to do that in truth and sincerity, our ears and our hearts must have been opened by God’s Spirit for the Word of truth.

Yet, it is demanded of us all because we are accountable creatures, and because every person is travelling to an all-decisive and never-ending eternity.

Therefore, how necessary, but also becoming to us that while we are sitting under the preaching of the Word, we give our entire attention to that which is presented to us. A sermon is not merely a lecture on one subject or another, nor an address, but God speaks to us through His Word which by means of His servants, He delivers to us.

It is a message from heaven which comes to us and of which we shall one day render an account. Take heed how ye hear!

Yea, even though, because of his deep fall, man can add nothing toward his salvation, yet God holds him accountable. God created us good and upright. But we have sought out many inventions. There are no excuses left for man. In that great day of judgment, he shall not be able to answer one of a thousand questions. It is the calling of a minister to preach discriminatingly, to rightly divide the Word of Truth in order that everyone shall receive his appointed portion. Every listener must make an application. He must determine whether he is a stranger to the life of God, or that by grace he has knowledge of it.

In all sermons we are as it were placed in the presence of the Lord, yea, as it were before the judgment seat of the Great Preacher of hearts Who trieth the reins. If we still live in the world and with the world, then we may conclude that by and by we shall also perish with the world. If we live as a pious Pharisee and are content with our self-righteousness and legal piety and legalism, then these words apply to us: “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.” We may be near the kingdom of God, but near is still without!

If we may know something of the life of God, then we must also make an application; an application to learn how far we can follow the minister; how far we are exercised in the ways of God, and how much we have learned to know ourselves; how far our want has been discovered and what the exercises of the soul are with respect to the knowledge of God, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit; how much progress we have made in the way of righteousness. Going backward is going forward.

God’s people go through hell to heaven, and they must go backward to heaven. The blind are being led by a way that they knew not, and in paths that they have not known, and then shall the Lord make the darkness light before them and crooked things straight. These things will He do unto them and not for sake them, Is. 42:16.

They must make an application as to what they know of the severing work of God, of being put out and placed without, but also of being translated and of being included; what they know of the adoption and acceptance; of going in and out, and finding pastures; of negotiating and settlement, of perish-ing in self and of being taken up in the eternal covenant; of agreeing with and entering into the covenant; of being made conformable to Christ; of evangelical sanctification, of dying unto the law, to sin and to self, and living before God the life of a poor sinner so that Christ may be formed in them and so that with the increased knowledge of self and of their heart and life, the offices of Christ shall obtain more value to their soul. Yea, as they constantly experience their wretchedness and their depraved nature, this shall more and more become their practice:

“God cares for us, our God is He,
Who would not fear His Majesty,
In earth as well as heaven.”

Psalter No. 420:5

Yea, finally, not to enlarge upon it any more, they find death in self in order that they may think more of death than of life. They would prefer to lay aside the body of sin and of death, and then:

“Soon I in glorious righteousness
Shall see Thee as Thou art;
Thy likeness, Lord, when I awake,
Shall satisfy my heart.”

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