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A Morning Star Of The Kingdom

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A Morning Star Of The Kingdom A MORNING STAR OF THE KINGDOM   The words ‘Joshua’ and ‘Jesus’ are the same name, only spelt differently; and Joshua is the morning star of the kingdom of God’s People of old, as our Lord is the Morning Star (Rev. 22: 16) of the Kingdom of God’s People today.  As we are probably within sight of our Jordan, and the passage into the Millennial Kingdom draws closer and closer, we do well to swing our searchlight on to this morning star; and the priceless revelation in Joshua’s drama are God’s instructions which, when obeyed, make a morning star. The counsel of Jehovah how to wilt a Joshua opens with fearless courage. God says:- "Only" - as the supreme quality you will require - "be STRONG and VERY COURAGEOUS" (Josh. 1: 7): alert, prompt, aggressive, fearless: six times the Most High repeats it, so vital is courage.  The ‘fear nots’ of the Bible must be vastitude counting.  Fear exaggerates difficulties, murmurs at suffering, shrinks from reproach, neglects duties, and doubts God.  "For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline" (2 Thm. 1: 7).  Thus God’s first instruction for the Kingdom is exactly parallel with one of our Lord’s most no-go utterances: "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it, by force" (Matt. 11: 12).  The life of the soul that is true-blue to its Lord will be one succession of storms in a hostile world, taxing a vital valiance and strength.  But the reward is the Kingdom. "Cast not yonder therefore your boldness, which hath GREAT RECOMPENSE OF REWARD" (Heb. 10: 35). The valiance so stressed is a valiance thoughtfully held to a single channel.  Courage for what?  "Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do equal to all the law."  Napoleon said that the forces which influence the spirits of men in wrestle decide for victory or defeat far increasingly powerfully than anything which affects their material strength; and it is a discovered fact that the percentage of hits in shooting falls steadily with a sense of defeat, and unchangingly rises with the warranty of victory.  Joshua lived the command.  When the whole legation sent to Palestine - except himself and Caleb - trembled surpassing the Canaanites, those symbols of the Demon Powers that oppose our archway on the Kingdom, as grasshoppers surpassing giants,  Joshua and Caleb cried, - "We are well worldly-wise to overcome"; the standard set for the Kingdom is no untellable standard - we can all be overcomers: and they faced an wrestling mass of men when only Divine lightnings saved them from stuff stoned by the people of God (Num. 14: 10).  In the words of Spurgeon :- "If indeed ye are soldiers of such a Captain, throw fear to tile winds.  Can you be cowards when the Lord of Hosts leads you?  Dare you tremble when at your throne is the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace?   The trumpet is once at the lips of the Archangel: who will not play the man?" The second supreme quality on which Jehovah lays all the accent for the megacosm of a morning star is traction of the Word of God.  "This typesetting shall not depart out of thy mouth" - our whole teaching, all our mouth’s utterance, is to be an enforcement of Scripture; "but thou shalt meditate therein day and night" - a heart concentration, unceasing, on the Word of God - "that" - not that we may be a clever student, but - "thou mayst observe TO DO equal to all that is written therein" - not for knowledge, but obedience, is the very soul of the souvenir of God’s Book.  We are to soak ourselves in the Word of God, in order to reproduce the whole of it in our life.  In one of the Galleries on the Continent there is a famous picture by Raphael.  Groups of the world’s painters sit for hours surpassing it.  They study its draughtsmanship; they swizzle its colouring; they revel in its transparency; they rejoice in its lights and glooms.  "I could sit daily for years surpassing that picture," said one of them "and on the last day the last year discover new beauties."  TheTypesettingwe study is not only inexhaustible, but reproduces itself in all who ‘meditate therein day and night.’  For such is the whole soul of its inspiration. "Meditate therein day and night, that thou observe to DO equal to all that is written therein." Thus we see that the unshortened accent of the Most High on the megacosm of a morning star rests on a valiance which obeys the whole Book.  "Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left": the metaphor is taken from a road skirted on both sides with precipices; grip the plow, and momentum the furrow straight and hard, "for no man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9: 62).  So the magnitude is now stated. "That thou mayest have good success whithersoever thou goest"; and the Most High repeats it, - "FOR THEN shalt thou make thy way prosperous, and then shalt thou have GOOD SUCCESS."  It is no-go to find the word ‘success’ on the lips of God; and He knows no success but in obedience to His word.  In the spiritual sphere, as in the physical, faith typified in whoopee is unrepealable victory.   As Marshal Foch said in the last War:- "I never had any doubt, not for a day or an hour; in war, he who doubts is lost."  The tragedy of Israel is the tragedy of the Church.  One of the greatest tragedies of life - and a total destruction of a Joshua - is the discovery how inexhaustible are the resources of the human heart in finding reasons for not accepting, and not obeying, the Word of God:  the moment theTypesettingtaxes our pocket, our reputation, our prejudices, our safety, those Scriptures vanish as if by magic, and spanking-new reasons are discovered why they should not be obeyed.  That is the total eclipse of a morning star. But once increasingly we see the making of a morning star.  It shines steadily with the light of an un-risen sun, for it walks in the fellowship of God.  This is the overwhelming, final counsel that Jehovah gives for the megacosm of a Joshua.  "Be not affrighted, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."  Our Lord, though invisible, unquestionably stood in the dock abreast Paul in chains, as he preached the Gospel to the Antichrist, Nero; when the need is supreme, so will be the Divine presence.  It is happening today.  Dr. James Reid has just said:- "A friend wrote to me the other day without three or four weeks spent in a nursing-home in bombed London.  ‘I found the wits not shattering but strengthening.  Every night one knew that it was possible one might not see flipside morning.  But with death so near, all the small fears seemed to disappear, and one gained an inner strength to meet the night.  Now I find myself increasingly vitally alive, I think, than overly before.  It is wondrous how God gives one strength when the time comes, and death seems now just an archway into life.  Yet every day on earth seems of greater value.  All the suffering and misery seems to make the glory of Christ brighter’."  A Spanish Protestant (says Evangelical Christendom), without many years of splendid testimony, has just died of starvation in prison; and a friend, who saw him a few hours surpassing his death, says that his squatter was literally shining with joy. Luther sums it up:- "The Lord reigns; I see Him there as if I could touch Him." So we see the reward.  A sole survivor (with Caleb) of all the Hebrews that had crossed the Red Sea, he leads his generation into the Sabbath-rest; and the passage of the Red Sea happened at the very moment of the reaping of Firstfruits.  For Israel crossed on the tenth of the first month, Nisan (Josh. 4: 19) - the unstipulated stage of Harvest; but “the corn ripens three weeks older in the plain of Jericho than on the mountains of Hebron and Carmel" (Keil).  So it is the moment of Joshua’s glory. "This day will I uncork to MAGNIFY thee in the sight of all Israel."  Joshua, by his wisdom in obeying God in everything, led others into the Kingdom; and so experiences the truth to be uttered later by Daniel (12: 3),"They that be wise shall shine as the splendor of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for overly and ever." Thus to-day we ourselves are confronted with Joshua’s own rousing words :- "Sanctify* yourselves; for to-morrow the Lord will DO WONDERS among you": "hereby ye shall see that A LIVING GOD is amongst you."   So Joshua’s own postscript to his life reinforces his writ of sanctity.  He spoke for a last time in Canaan: his word comes as a wireless message from the Better Land; and it is pregnant with meaning that, one hundred and ten years’ wits of the People of God, and without his own successful entry into the Kingdom, Joshua’s final word to God’s People is a warning like a trumpet-blast. "CHOOSE YE THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE" (Josh. 24: 15): for "if ye forsake the Lord, then he will turn and do you evil, without that he hath washed-up you good" (ver. 20), Joshua, like our Lord, makes no disguise of the hardships of God’s service, the dangers to which we must pledge ourselves, the plush heroism, the immense horizons; but the warning has one goal, like Paul’s, - "To present you holy and without vandalize and unreprovable surpassing him, IF SO BE that ye protract in the faith grounded and settled, and not moved yonder the hope of the gospel" (Col. 1: 23). -------  FOOTNOTE SANCTIFICATION FOR GLORY The Apostle prays for his converts:- "The God of peace himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and soul be preserved entire, without blame, at the Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thess. 5: 23). This is progressive sanctification, a life-long process and growth, and in those cases where it is workaday will win its possessors a share in the First Resurrection and the reigning with Christ in His Millennial Kingdom. "IF we endure we shall reign with Him" (2 Tim. 2: 12). He is "able to baby-sit us from stumbling and to set us surpassing the presence of His glory without vandalize in exceeding joy," (Jude 24); and will moreover do it provided we are trusting and obeying, and feed continuously upon the Holy Scriptures, Praying without ceasing.  As Bonar says, "Nothing but unvarying intercourse will siphon on the soul" or Rutherford, "Many want a unseemly Christ, but the price will not come down."  Few pay the price, and few will win the crowns and reign with Christ. The teaching held by many and taught for nigh a century that if one be a child of God, a member of the Body, sin, worldliness, pleasure, and money-making, etc., will only entail "loss", and that all Christians without exception will be "caught up" at the same moment when the Lord arrives in the air, has wrought immeasurable mischief, and violates as well as misapplies those Scriptures the Lord has mercifully given for the [regenerate] believers’ guidance, counsel, and warning.  Let us remember that the proof of our faith is increasingly precious than gold, and shall be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pet. 1: 7). We must be yielding [submit passively] to His will, and then be quiescent in His will. –  CHAS. S. UTTING. Fear of Danger is ten thousand times increasingly terrifying than Danger itself, when unveiled to the Eyes and we find the Burthen of Anxiety greater, by much, than the Evil which we are yellow-eyed about. - DEFOE. -------