DIVINE DISPROPORTION - Oswald Chambers
Lord began His discourse by saying ” Blessed are.” and His hearers must have been staggered by what fol lowed. According to Jesus, they were to be blessed in every condition which from earliest childhood they had been taught to regard as a curse. Our Lord was talking to Jews, and they believed that the sign of the blessing of God was material prosperity in every shape and form, and yet Jesus says Blessed are you for exactly the opposite. Blessed are the poor in spirit.” ” Blessed are they that mourn.
(a) The “Mines” of God. vv. 1-10.
The first time you read the Beatitudes they appear beautiful and simple and unstartling statements, and they go unobserved into the subconscious mind. We are so used to reading the sayings of Jesus that they slip over us unheeded, they sound sweet and pious and wonderfully simple, but in reality they are like spiritual torpedoes that burst and explode in the subconscious mind, and when the Holy Spirit brings them back to our consciousness we realize what startling statements they are. The Beati tudes, for instance, seem merely mild and beautiful precepts for unworldly people but of very little use for the stern world in which we live. We soon find, however, that they contain the dynamite of the Holy Ghost, they explode like a spiritual ” mine ” when the circumstances of our life require them to do so, and rip and tear and revolutionize all our conceptions.
The test of a disciple is obedience to the light when these things come to the conscious mind. It is not that I hunt through the Bible for some precept to obey (Jesus Christ s teaching never leads me to take myself as a moral prig) ; but that I live so in touch with God that the Holy Spirit can continually bring some word of His and apply it to the circumstances I am in. I am not brought to the test until the Holy Spirit brings the word back.
It is not a question of applying the Beatitudes literally, but of allowing the life of God to invade you by regeneration, and then of soaking your mind in the teaching of Jesus which slips down into the subconscious mind ; by and bye a set of circumstances arises when one of His statements emerges, and instantly you have to decide whether you will accept the tremendous spiritual revolution that will be produced if you do obey this precept of Jesus. If you do obey it, your actual life becomes different; and you find you have the power to obey it if you will. That is the way the Holy Spirit works in the heart of a disciple. The teaching of Jesus comes with astonishing discomfort to begin with, because it is out of all proportion to our natural way of looking at things; but Jesus puts in a new sense of proportion, and we have slowly to form our walk and conversation on the line of His precepts. Remember that our Lord s teaching applies only to His disciples.
(b) The Motive of Godliness, vv. 11-12.
The motive at the back of the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount is love for God. Read the Beatitudes with your mind fixed on God, and you will realize their neglected side. Their meaning in relationship to men is so obvious that it scarcely needs stating, but the Godward aspect is not so obvious. Blessed are the poor in spirit ” towards God. Am I a pauper towards God? Do I know I cannot prevail in prayer; I cannot blot out the sins of the past; I cannot alter my disposition; I cannot lift myself nearer God? Then I am in the very place where I am able to receive the Holy Spirit. No man can receive Holy Spirit who is not convinced he is a pauper spiritually. Blessed are the meek ” towards God s dispensations. Blessed are the merciful ” to God s reputation. Do I awaken sympathy for myself when I am in trouble? Then I am slandering God because the reflex thought in people’s minds is How hard God is with that man. It is easy to slander God s character because He never attempts to vindicate Himself. Blessed are the pure in heart” that is obviously Godward. Blessed are the peace makers ” between God and man, the note that was struck at the birth of Jesus.
Is it possible to carry out the Beatitudes? Never! Unless God can do what, Jesus says He can, give us the Holy Spirit who will re-make us and bear us into a new realm. The essential life of the saint is simplicity, and Jesus makes the motive of godliness gloriously simple, viz: Be carefully careless about everything saving your relationship to Me. The motive of a disciple is to be well- pleasing to God. The true blessedness of the saint is in determinedly making and keeping God first. Herein lies the disproportion between Jesus Christ s principles and all other moral teaching: Jesus bases everything on God-realization, while other teachers base everything on self-realization.
There is a difference between devotion to principles and devotion to a Person. Jesus never proclaimed a cause; He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself for My sake. Discipleship is based not on devotion to abstract ideals, but on devotion to a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ,consequently the whole of the Christian life is stamped by originality. Whenever the Holy Spirit sees a chance of glorifying Jesus, He will take your whole personality, and simply make it blaze and glow with personal passionate devotion to the Lord Jesus. You are no longer devoted to a cause nor the evotee of a principle, but the devoted love slave of the Lord Jesus. No man on earth has that love unless the Holy Ghost has imparted it to him. Men may admire Him and respect Him and reverence Him, but no man can love God until the Holy Ghost has shed abroad that love in his heart (see Romans V. 5.) The only Lover of the Lord Jesus Christ is the Holy Ghost.
Jesus puts all this blessedness of high virtue and rare felicity on the ground of For My sake. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake.” It is not suffering for conscience sake, or for convictions sake, or because of the ordinary troubles of life, but some thing other than all that For My sake.
Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man s sake.” Jesus did not say Rejoice when men separate you from their company because of your own crochetty notions but when they reproach you for My sake. When you begin to deport yourself among men as a saint, they will leave you absolutely alone, you will be reviled and persecuted. No man can stand that unless he is in love with Jesus Christ, he cannot do it for a con viction or for a creed, but he can do it for a Being whom he loves. Devotion to a Person is the only thing -that tells ; devotion to death to a Person, not devotion to a creed or a doctrine.
Who that one moment has the least descried Him, Dimly and faintly, hidden and afar Doth not despise all excellence beside Him, Pleasures and powers that are not and that are. Ay, amid all men bear himself thereafter Smit with a solemn and a sweet surprise, Dumb to their scorn and turning on their laughter Only the dominance of earnest eyes.”
