There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; the locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces." (Prov. 30:24-28.)
It does not require much spiritual intelligence to perceive the lesson God would teach us in the above verses. The mere man of the earth finds it wisdom in his sphere to lay them to heart -he reaps earthly blessing by it. Shall we be less wise in our heavenly sphere and fail to reap? God forbid!
They are wise indeed who, during the pleasurable days of summer remember the coming winter. Unquestionably there are pleasures in sin. God's word owns it. Speaking of Moses, it says, " Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." (Heb. 12:25.) It is not necessarily the gross, beastly ways of the degraded. In the case of Moses, the attractions of kingly grandeur and position, though enjoyed in a most moral way, would have been"the pleasures of sin."The whole moral atmosphere of this world is the direct production of sin, and he who enjoys it enjoys the pleasures of sin. How subtle it is! how ensnaring! and how effectually it robs multitudes of well-behaved people from the wisdom of the ant! They forget the approaching days of winter-the day when, the deluding bubble being broken, they will say, " Lord, Lord, open to us!" but He will answer, " Verily I say unto you, I know you not." Day of awful desolation! who can describe it?
How wise are they, then, who have laid to heart that day, and who neither forget nor neglect the salvation which God has prepared through Jesus Christ.
But what are our efforts, our works, our mightiest endeavors against the day " that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble" (Mal. 4:i)-the day when even for "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof " (Matt. 12:36) before that throne where a chief among the prophets had to cry out "Woe is me! for I am undone" (Is. 6:5), and angels have to cover their faces? What are we before that glory? What can we do to make ourselves meet for it? Man may talk proudly or boastingly away from it, but he who has the least sense of it must own himself a poor weak "cony," trembling at the sight of it. Where can we flee for refuge?"They make their houses in the rocks."Ah, there is security." In Christ"! what a safe place!
What is it to be "in Christ"?It is to be seen by the eye of God in such absolute oneness with Him that He can say of us, "As He [Christ] is, so are we in this world" (I Jno. 4:17), and again, "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit."Of course He could not thus associate us with His blessed Son with our sins unremoved and our sin unjudged. Here moved our sins by laying them upon Jesus on the cross (i Pet. 2:24), and judged our sin by making Him to be sin for us and condemning Him (2 Cor. 5:21).Thus the way is all clear. To him that believes in His blessed Son He can say, You are "justified from all things" and you are "in Christ"-in Christ risen and glorified, seen in all His beauty:" as He is, so are we." Isn't this to have our house in the rocks? What matters it if we are a feeble folk,-if we cannot lift a finger for ourselves, since we have such a place of security? What is the weakness of that infant in its mother's arms but a means of displaying its place of security? What is the prodigal's need but the way to the Father's wealth and the Father's heart. Blessed conies! The storm may sweep all before it out- side. Their houses are in the rocks, and they rest in peace.
But if this blessedness, this place of security; be, as we see, the fruit of the work of Christ, we have had to be taught of God to enter into it. We have been born of Him, and this means, not an improvement of the old nature, but the imparting of a totally new one over and above the other, which has its instincts and desires in holiness as the other in sin. It makes us love God and all them that are born of Him. It gives us a family feeling, so that while tender and kind to all men, those of the "household of faith" ever have the prominent place, because they are near and dear. Wherever two such persons meet, they will be attracted to each other.-" Every one that loveth Him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of Him.", (i Jno. 5:1:) Thus the Lord's prayer is fulfilled:" That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us" (Jno. 17:21). " The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands."It is not an outward government that unites them, but the locust nature. So the family of God. The tie between them is by virtue of the divine nature which every one of them possesses, not by any outward organization. But this is not all. Another tie exists; dependent upon this, but quite different, and based on an entirely different thing. When Christ had accomplished redemption, risen from the dead, and been glorified, the Holy Ghost came down from heaven to introduce these children of God into a new and peculiar unity-a unity that would depend on no kings, no rulers, no laws, no walls, but in the living power of that blessed Spirit who was sent to form it. " By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body" (i Cor. 12:13),-"The Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:23). Thus the children of God scattered about among Jews, Samaritans, or Gentiles were taken out of those connections through the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and in living power introduced into the unity of the Body of Christ. And it is in this unity every child of God in this dispensation is introduced.
But our practice agrees with our position and calling only in the measure in which the Spirit of God in us is ungrieved. He is the power, and only power, we have here as Christians. What must we expect, if we grieve Him in any manner, but inability to practice what we know, as well as to learn what we do not know? May we have a single eye. Thus, in the Church there may be leaders and rulers and teachers as there may be among the locusts, but its unity is not in their government as theirs is not in a king. It is a living unity; the creation of God; an established, unchangeable, eternal unity, the walking in which we learn ac-cording as we " walk in the Spirit" breathing the atmosphere whence all this comes.
But it is faith which is wise in all this wisdom. What but faith can't take God at His word? Unbelief wants to see, wants to feel, wants to reason, wants any thing but" Thus saith the Lord." " The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces."That is just what faith does. It lays hold of the word of God, and it goes in the palace of the King. " Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" (]no. 11:40.)
May we be " exceeding wise," though this wis-dom put us among the "things which are little upon the earth." P.J.L.