: Memoranda Sacra by Harris J Rendel James Rendel - Devotional literature

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GOD THE GOD OF THE LIVING

I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up.

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Who is like unto Thee, O most mighty LORD, for verily Thy truth is on every side. Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy Presence? If I climb up into heaven, Thou art there. If I go down unto the dead, Thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me. Therefore when I sleep in the grave, I am in Thy cradle; and when I shall arise up and awake, behold around me are Thy everlasting arms.

So not alone we land upon that shore: 'Twill be as though we had been there before; We shall meet more we know Than we can meet below, And find our rest like some returning dove, And be at home at once with our Eternal Love.

GOD THE GOD OF THE LIVING

"Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not a God of dead men, but of living men, for all live unto Him."--LUKE xx. 37, 38.

It is very likely that some of us may have been perplexed in the study of this passage at the answer which the Lord Jesus gave to the Sadducees, and doubtful as to whether their difficulties and questions were fairly met by the text that He quoted.

Certainly if we had been told to search the Scriptures for passages bearing on the Future Life and the doctrine of the Resurrection, this is about the last text that we should have thought of adducing; we should never have detected in these verses a key that would unlock the closed doors between two worlds and make sunlight be where previously all was dark.

And even if we had been pointed to this passage containing the revelation of God at the bush, we should probably only have seen in it another of the magnificent affirmations of the Divine self-existence, another of the grand "I Am's" which sound forth at times from the mount of cloud and vision. We might even have gone so far as to see how much more wonderful it is to have a faith in which, with wonderful simplicity, God says "I Am," than merely to have a religion which affirms "He is," and we should have been glad that at any time there were men to whom God spoke for Himself. But we should not have supposed that the statement had any bearing on our life and existence, or that it solved, or put us in the way of solving, some of the questions that perplex us. Perhaps the principal reason for this lies in the words of Jesus Himself: "Ye do not understand the scriptures nor the power of God." And yet ought we not to be aware of this, that every revelation of God involves a revelation about the creature, just as the earth is affected by every potency and virtue in the sun? Revelation is not merely information about God, without relation to our own life and being. For instance: both the Spirit and the Scripture combine to assure us that God is Love. Is that merely a piece of theological information about God of which the universe is independent, or does He not in the revelation spread His wide pinions over all creatures that He has made and gather them together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings? Out of such a revelation the willing soul discerns the New Jerusalem descend as a bride adorned for her husband; the eager soul receives, the wayward soul returns, the sorrowful soul is comforted. No revelation of God is possible that is simply information without a bearing on my history, my existence, my future. And so with our text we may say the "I Am" of God involves the "I shall be" of the creature. If one comes to me and says, "I was your father's friend," it may be either that my father is dead, or that there has been a change in the affection of the person speaking; but if he comes to me and says, "I am your father's friend," he implies two things: the existence of my father and the permanence of his own love for him; and the one just as much as the other. So when God says, not "I was the God of Abraham," but "I am," etc., He is not merely asserting His own existence and providence, but the continued life of the faithful of ancient days. And so the "I Am" of God proclaims the "I am" of the creature; the soul looks down the sloping years and says of its prospect, "God is, and I am." And Christ's answer to the Sadducee comes to this: "You are inconsistent in denying the future life; you ought first to have denied the being of God; but as long as He is, beat His saints small as the dust, scatter them to the four corners of the earth, yet He will send forth His angels and gather His elect again from the four winds, and lo! they are sitting down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God: for He is not the God of dead men, but of living men; and all live unto Him!"

Those who believe in God can easily take heart to look through the mysteries of life and death and to discern glory through the gloom; but the Sadducee did not stand in the line of the sunbeams that come from the other world; no wonder it was dark to him.

Not but what our life is full of mysteries: birth and death alike perplex us; the "Whence" and the "Whither."

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