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GOD BE MERCIFUL TO ME, A SINNER!
Here is a comforting promise for us all—
"This is a faithful saying . . . that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners!"
One day the Lord Jesus was invited to dinner by a rich man whose name was Simon.
Perhaps this rich man asked Jesus to dinner because he wished to see Him do some miracle—something wonderful which no one else could do; or he may have imagined that people would think more of himself if he had Jesus for a guest; at any rate, by what we read afterwards, I am afraid Simon the Pharisee did not invite Jesus because he loved Him.
But there was somebody present at that feast who did love Jesus, but she was not invited.
In Eastern lands the houses are not shut up like our houses, but because it is so warm, the dining-rooms are often open to the air on one or two sides, or people take their meals in the cool shady courtyards.
When a great man makes a feast, people hear of it, and come round the house to look at what is going on.
In the city there lived a poor sinful and sorrowful woman who had learned to love the Lord Jesus: perhaps she had heard Him say these loving words, "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
When this sorrowful woman heard that Jesus was gone to dinner at the Pharisee's house, she brought a little box made of alabaster, which was filled with some very sweet-smelling ointment, and she made her way into the open dining-hall, and when she saw where the Lord was sitting or reclining, as the custom was, on a sort of couch to the table, she came up, and stood behind Him!
And as she stood there and thought of all His love and compassion, she began to weep, and her tears fell down over His feet as He reclined at the table.
Then she wiped His feet with her hair, and anointed them with the sweet ointment.
But the Pharisee who had invited the Lord Jesus looked on with anger. He thought if Jesus were a great teacher, He would not have allowed a woman from the city to come and wash His feet with her tears.
But Jesus knows all our hearts, and He could see that the poor woman loved Him so much that she would go away and try never to grieve Him any more.
By and by He turned to Simon, and told him to look at this woman and compare her love with his.
Jesus said words something like this: "Simon, I was tired and dusty with my journey when I came in, and you did not give me water to bathe my feet, but she has washed my feet with tears; you did not offer me a kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss my feet; you did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with precious ointment. She has loved me very much, because I have forgiven her very much."
And turning to the woman, Jesus said to her, "Thy sins are forgiven; . . . go in peace."
Oh, the joy of hearing Jesus say those words!
And we may have that joy too, if we come to Him with humble loving heart, and tell Him that we are sorry.
He never turns anyone away who comes to Him; so, dear little children, let us trust His loving heart, and though we know we are very unworthy, do not let us stay away for that, for Jesus longs that we may be forgiven, and so be able to go away "in peace."
"Nothing but Leaves"
I have seen a picture of a fig tree, and I want to describe it to you, that we may understand a little about one of our Lord's Parables.
There are a great many Parables in the New Testament: they are word-pictures to teach us God's great lessons.
At school your teacher has a large blackboard, and sometimes she sketches an object, and explains it to you, does she not?
One day she drew a cracked cup, the crack of which grew wider under her clever fingers, and she turned round and said to her class, "Is this cup of any use?" And there were plenty of "No's" from all over the room; but one child ventured "Perhaps it could be mended!"
And then the teacher gave a bright look, and she said, "Yes, Charlie, you are right! And so are the others with their 'No's' all over the room. For unless the cup is mended, it is of no use. The cup is a picture of our characters! If there is a flaw in them, a crack that gets wider and wider, then the cup is of no use, is it?"
"It might be thrown away!" ventured another child.
"Yes," said the teacher; "but, if it could be mended—as Charlie said—then it could be used again. So what must we do, Charlie?"
She turned her face to the little boy, and a smile came over his features as he answered, "There's a china-mender comes down our road every week—he could do it!"
And the teacher smiled back. Did Charlie know that he had touched on a great truth? So she went on—
"Yes, we must 'have faith in God.' We must take our cracked cups, and our faulty characters, to the Great Mender, Jesus our Saviour, and ask Him to make us useful, serviceable little Christians!"
So now, I am going to make an imaginary blackboard and show you a branch of a fig tree!
Look at that fig growing out of the stalk; it is large, and oblong, and plump, and it is firmly fixed to the big branch.
And then, above and below it are little sprouting leaves, some just come out, some not yet burst from their little buds; and soon the fruit, which is already ripe, will be covered up by the leaves, as they grow larger and larger.
But suppose, when you lift the leaves, there is no fruit?
Then you come to the conclusion that the tree must be a barren tree, and you turn away sorry and disappointed.
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THE BARREN FIG TREE.
And this is a little word-picture of the barren fig tree, about which our Lord gives us a Parable.
He was coming from Bethany, and it says He hungered. Perhaps the Lord Jesus had been up all night praying to His Father.
So, as He came near to the fig tree, He saw it was full of leaves; but when He got close to it, He found there were no figs under the leaves—it was barren.
And as He turned away He said, in the disciples' hearing, "Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever."
Oh, how sad He was to have to say that!
And presently the fig tree withered away.
Just before this, the Lord came down the side of the Mount of Olives, and in turning a corner of the steep path a sight of the beautiful city of Jerusalem burst upon their view. It says in the Gospel of Luke—
"And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes."
Jesus wept for all the sorrow that was coming on the beloved city, and because the Jews would not have Him as their Saviour.
This was indeed like the fig tree, which had leaves, but no fruit.
The Jews ought to have known from their own Scriptures of the Old Testament, which they read every Sabbath, that on this very day it was foretold in the Book of Nehemiah, and also in Daniel and Zechariah, that the Messiah was to enter Jerusalem as King, meek and lowly, and riding on an ass's colt.
They were proud of their knowledge, and of their possession of God's Temple, and His Scriptures; but they had not fruit under the leaves of their pride and unbelief. They had even been plotting to kill Him. They had rejected Him in their hearts, and in a few days' time they were going to crucify Him!
The next day Jesus and His disciples passed by that fig tree again, and it had begun to wither and dry up; and the disciples said, "How soon is the fig tree withered!"
And the answer of our Lord must have astonished them. "Have faith in God!" He said.
Now, like the teacher with the blackboard, I want to gather up the lesson I have learned from this story—
Do not let our dear Lord, Who died for us, come and look into our hearts and find no fruit, but only leaves!
How He must long to have us all we should be!
Do not let us be like the cracked and useless cup! But let us go to the great Healer and Mender and Cleanser of our poor characters, and ask Him to make us what He would like to see us.
The only way to get "mended" and to bear fruit instead of only leaves, is to go to Him Who died on the Cross to save us, and to find in Him forgiveness, strength, and peace.
"What is a Talent?" perhaps some one asks.
A Talent in our Lord's time was a piece of money of great value, of about £342, and in the story which Jesus told the disciples, a Talent was described as something precious which was given to the servants of a great lord, to trade with, while he was on a long journey.
To one servant this lord gave ten Talents to trade with; to another, five; to another, two; according to their several ability; and to another, one.
And what do you think the servant who had only one did with his Talent? He went away and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money!
Then the lord of those servants took his journey.
At length the time came for his return, and he called his servants and reckoned with them.
The one who had traded with ten Talents brought ten Talents more to his lord; and the man with five brought five more; and the man with two brought two more. And the lord was very pleased with these faithful servants, and said, "Well done!" to each of them, and gave them great rewards.
But at last there came the man who had only received one Talent; and as he spread the one Talent out before him, he said, "I knew that you were a hard master, so I was afraid, and went and hid your Talent in the earth. Lo! Then, you have what is yours!"
And the great lord was very grieved and angry with that wicked and idle servant, and he took the Talent from him and gave it to the one who had ten; and the faithless servant was cast out, and in the darkness he wept despairingly that he could never enter, as the others did, "into the joy of their lord."
And now I am going to tell you a true story to try and explain to you the meaning of these Talents in our present-day life.
I told you that to us, the Talent that Jesus spoke of is not money, but something more precious still, which we are given by God to trade with.
"Trade with?" you ask. Yes—that is the idea.
If we are God's servants, if we have taken Jesus Christ as our own Blessed Saviour, God expects us to try to get others to trust Him too, and so to multiply the Talents which He has given into our charge.
You will understand this a little better when you have read the true story I am going to tell you.
There was a lady taking a Journey a few years ago, and she had to pass through London and go to another terminus on her way.
She had one of God's "Talents" in her heart. She knew that Jesus Christ was a great and precious Saviour; and before she started on her journey she prayed:
"Make me a blessing to somebody as I travel!"
Well, by the time she had reached London, she was tired, and when she got to the other terminus, as she went along the platform she saw a man sitting in a carriage alone. But she passed on; she thought she was too tired to speak to that man.
So she hid her Lord's money!
But her heart smote her; and after a moment she got out, and entered the carriage where the man, who appeared to be a foreman in some works, sat in the farthest corner.
They were soon off, and though she felt very nervous, she moved nearer to him, and made a remark on the beautiful sunset!
He seemed surprised.
And when, further, she said, "How it reminded her of God's love."
He answered: "Oh, I do not think of those things! I leave that to my wife and daughters! I and my sons read different things from that! We do very well with our lives, and leave them to theirs!"
The lady hardly knew what to answer. She felt she was not "up" in all these unbelieving questions of the day.
But then she bethought herself: "I wish I could think of some word of God that would suit his case! For the Word of God is living and powerful."
And like a flash, she remembered the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, and she said, "Did you ever hear this?" And found herself able to repeat it to him word for word:
"Two men went up into the Temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a Publican.
"The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself: God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are . . .
"And the Publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other."
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HE SPREAD THE ONE TALENT OUT BEFORE HIM.
As the lady finished that parable, which God had so wonderfully helped her to repeat, the train began to slow down at the next station. The man gathered up his things, came to her side and shook her hand warmly.
"Thank you very much," he said earnestly, "for what you have said!"
And then he jumped out, and the train took the lady on to her destination.
All of us are given Talents, according to our several abilities.
Whatever it is—let each one of us do what we can to tell others of God's love in giving us a Saviour; and if we do, surely—yes, surely—God will say to us, "Well done, good and faithful servants, enter into the joy of your Lord!"
One day the Lord Jesus gave a very short Parable to His disciples of only one verse, but He would not have told it to us, if He had not intended us to learn a lesson from it.
I will copy the verse for you, because it is so very short, and then I will explain it afterwards.
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THE LEAVEN IN THE MEAL.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened."
Leaven is what we now call yeast.
In the dictionary, leaven, or yeast, is described as something "which pervades a mass, and changes its nature."
And so we will think of it in that light, and try to draw out from it something which may help us every day.
If the Kingdom of Heaven is hidden in our hearts, then it ought to pervade our whole lives.
I have seen an untidy woman, and an untidy home, perfectly transformed by the love of God, and her desire to please Him.
A year or two ago, I knew a woman who had become rather fond of drink. All at once she found that if she wanted to enter into "the Kingdom of Heaven," that temptation must be left off. So she told the Lord Jesus all about it, and then she left it off in the strength which He gave her; and she said to me: "I have never taken any since!"
So she found, like many others whom I have known, that when "the Kingdom of Heaven" takes possession of our hearts, our whole nature becomes changed, and we try to live to God's glory!
In the same chapter in Matthew, the thirteenth, that has in it the Parable about the leaven, our Lord gives us another picture of "the Kingdom of Heaven."
He describes a man who was digging in a field; who came by chance upon a great treasure.
The man hastily covered up the ground, and went to the owner of the field, and asked him to let him buy the whole field.
The price was very high, but the man thought of the treasure, and he did not hesitate. He went back, and sold all that he had, and came and bought the field. He did not grudge it, for the treasure was worth everything he possessed!
Then our Lord tells us of another man.
He was a merchant; and he travelled to far-off countries seeking beautiful pearls.
At length he came across the most beautiful pearl he had ever seen—it was of great price.
This man did not hesitate either. He saw the value of that pearl, and he sold everything he had and bought it!
In the twenty-fifth of Matthew, Jesus gives us another Parable, and it is about His coming back; and I am sure you will like to hear that one, for you have perhaps seen pictures of those Ten Virgins who went out to meet the Bridegroom, with little lamps in their hands?
Five of these Virgins were wise, and five were foolish. Why was it that some were wise and some not?
Perhaps you have a brother who has cycled into the country, and comes home later than you expected, and tired-out?
"Yes," he says, "I have had to walk my machine for half-a-dozen miles—my lamp went out, and there was not a shop to be seen!"
Yes, that was it; he had not taken oil to fill his lamp.
So the foolish Virgins took their lamps, but took no oil with them; but the wise took oil in their vessels, with their lamps.
The Bridegroom seemed long in coming, and they all fell asleep while they waited.
And at midnight there was a cry made: "Behold the Bridegroom cometh! Go ye out to meet Him!"
Then all the Virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise: "Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are gone out."
But the wise answered that they must not do that, lest there should not be enough for them both; instead they advised the foolish Virgins to go and buy for themselves.
And while they went to buy, the Bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with Him to the marriage; and the door was shut.
Afterwards, when the other Virgins came back, they asked that the door might be opened; but the Bridegroom answered that He did not know them.
I am sure you will feel sad when you think that the foolish Virgins could not share in the Marriage Supper.
I think this is told us to warn us to ask God to give us His Holy Spirit in our hearts, which, like the oil in the little lamps, will show us the way, and keep us brightly shining for Him!
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Heavenly Bridegroom in this Parable.
When He was on earth, He told His disciples over and over again to watch most earnestly for Him to come back.
He warned all of us who love Him, to be ready to open to Him if he knocks; to guard against being so bound up in the pleasures of life that the day of His return should take any of us by surprise.
Jesus ends this Parable with these words—
"Watch therefore: for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh."