SUNDAY HEADING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9040, 19 November 1892, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY HEADING.

A DEED OF DARING. [notes of an address by KEV. JOHN m'nkill.]

Beniah, the son of .Tehoiila, the son of a valiant man, of Kahzeol, who had done many acts. . . . He went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow.—ll. Samuel, xxiii., 20.

Hebe is a man worth looking at I He was in a sense unlike Shammah, of whom we read in the same chapter. To Shammah the Philistines suddenly came; they swept down on him ; he stood firm—and it was death or victory. He had to slash and cut and hew in the best way he could. But this is a different kind of thing. It is a snowy day ; think of it. It is not like a day in spring ; not like your spring morning that makes you heroic, when the sky is bright, and the birds are whistling, and your own blood is tingling in your veins. It was not that kind of morniug, but a wet-blanket kind of morning, with nothing to stir the blood, nothiug to cheer the poor fellow. Ou a snowy day, when all others were in, sitting over the fire burning their knees, he arose, went to the door, and listened. While other men's faces grew long with fear, his brightens. "I have been wanting to kill that lion for the last six months, and never could get the chance. Thank God, this day has come, and that we know where he is." Look at him trudging through the snow ! There was nothing to help him, nobody to cheer or encourage him; and as he goes through the air thick and hurtling with the flakes of. snow, you feel here is courage not less than that of Shammah. And he went on and on, and on, and nearer and nearer came to the pit with the lion in it. He comes to the edge of it and looks down, and sees the ravager and destroyer, the terror of the countrysde for many a day; and with a prayer to the God of Israel, lie leaps down beside the lion, knowing that out of that pit only one will come up alive. It was a big deed by a big man. This man was worthy of his name—a mighty man. Did it ever occur to you that that man was wonderfully like another Beuiah ? Did yon ever think he was wonderfully like the Lord Jesus Christ, who, on one of the dullest and darkest days that ever the world saw, went down into the pit and encountered, face to face, the devourer and destroyer of men ? And He had nobody to encourage and nobody to cheer. All His disciples forsook Him and fled; and single, unaided, and alone, He went down into the pit and slew the lion, the dragon, the devourer. He fought and He won.

Up from the pit He arose With a mighty triumph o'er his foes, He arose a victor from the dark domain, And He lives for ever with His saints to reign. Hallelujah, Christ arose 1 Did it ever occur to you that that mandown there in the pit, in that deadly conflict, is a type and figure, in his action, of what every believing soul has to go through. There is a lion-like strength of evil in everyone of us, and we are not saved till our foot is upon its neck, and its power is broken. With some the lion is out, ranging and ror.ring, as that lion might be supposed to have been before this snowy day, when he fell into the pit. That is to say, the power of sin is apparent; they are notorious drunkards, they are notorious sinners in some-form or another. But with others, the lion is in a pit, and —God help such foolish people they think they are all right when they have driven sin in out of sight. If they can only keep sin from breaking out openly in their faces, in their speech, in their conduct, the poor dupes think that all is well. No, my brother, the big work is to be done yet. Go down into the pit, go down into the deeps of your own fallen nature, the depths of Satan in you, go down there quick, in the strength of Benaiah, and win that fight, or you are not saved yet. None of us, old or young, ignorant or learned, has a right to feel safe until he has done Benaiah's deed, and gone down into the depths of sin that are in himself with the lamp of God and the sword of God, and stabbed to the heart the life of sin that is in the very deep places of his soul. That is to be done ; and that is why some of us are so far back, because it is not done yet. That lion is not slain; that battle is not fought between me and my own sin down in the pit. Go down to him to-day. Where you sit, go down ; listen to the growlings of the brute in yon. Listen ! Feel, almost, the lashiug of his tail. Go down and fight, and in God's name win down there. "He slew the lion iu the pit on a snowy day." The last thing I want you to notice is the little point of extra light that comes from the name. What does Benaiah mean '! Benaiah means, literally, the man whom Jehovah built. There is something in a name, after all! The man whom God built from the protoplasm upward and onward, the Godbuilt, God-strengthened, God-nerved, Godsustained man. May God grant that all of us shall have that pedigree ! May God grant that out from this hall to-night a multitude may go of whom this is the generation: " Born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of man, but born of God." Born again! Spiritual men, whose foundations God hath laid in Jesus Christ; and out of whom God is making strong, stalwart, heroic, spiritual men. because He has built them and founded them on the Eternal Rock of his own dear Son.

May the Lord Himself appear to us in all His saving strength, and turn, for all of us, defeat into victory, and the shadow of death into the morning! All appearances to the contrary notwithstanding the Lord is with us. There is no cause for fleeing, and the very dark conditions of things will only give us opportunity to glorify God, and to do somethingto do something that shall find for us an honourable mention in the great day. Cease to be dispirited; cease to talk despondently ; let us lift our hearts into the light of the face of our great Captain and King. " Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee." It is a day of splendid opportunity for the individual. The battle is the common soldier's battle, and the Great Captain's eye is searching the field, that He may show Himself strong in the behalf of everyone who is making a stand against sin. V.-THE MEANING OF THE NAME. The singular of the plural word Elohim is Eloah. It is commonly thought that the root is to be found in the word el, which means strength, or might. Some, however, find it in alah, to take an oath, to make a promise which cannot be broken, and it seems not unlikely that both meanings are to be found in the name. We can fancy Adam and Eve trying their strength, finding how far it would go and where it stopped, and then appealing to Elohim to do for them what they could not do for themselves, just like a little child new to the world, to whom it parents are as gods, that is powers. It is well for a child, it will save endless trouble and pain, if it learn at once that these, the only Elohim it can yet know, will abide by their word; that what they say they will do, they will undoubtedly do, and that therefore they must be obeyed. Whether the name Elohim suggested itself to Adam and Eve as expressing what they had learned of their Creator, or whether they first heard the name from the Creator Himself, it would be given for a reason, and that reason may well nave been to express in one word the two great qualities of strength and of unchan?eableness. When, through disobedience, men had lost the knowledge of Elohim, the source of all power, they still saw themselves surrounded by elohim—that is, , by powers, from which they. could not escape—the sun, the moon, fire, the air—and soon began to worship these elohim. Deuteronomy iv., 19; xvii., 3. 11. Kings xvii., 16: xxi., 3; xxiii., 5—11; Jeremiah viii., 1, 2; xliv., 15-23. Ezekiel viii., 16. They were right in believing themgejves eaoompasaed

by powers seen and unseen, most wonderful, and past their finding out. r Their fault, their grievous fault, lay in shutting their eye* to the fact that, in the beginning, every power, every el, had been created by the one Elohim, and that they were all absolutely at His command. Job xii., 15, 16. Jeremiah xiv 22. Nahum i., 3"-6. I. Kings, xvii., l.(j' 14 xviii, 38, 39. Refusing to consider this fundamental truth, they came to believe in Elohim with very limited powers (1 Kings xx., 23), and in others who were supposed to require the most horrible sacrifices. Deuteronomy xii., 31. 11. Kings xxiii., 10; II Chronicles xxviii., 3; xxxiii., 6. Jeremiah vii.,3l; xix.,4,5; xxxii., 35. Psalms cvi 37,38. Isaiah Ivii., 5. ' Some having been made to fear the one Elohim, but not having learned to trust Him " feared the Lord and served their own' elohim ;" a practice not unknown at the present day. 11. Kings, xvii., 24-41. When we read in our English Bible that the Lord is above all gods, it is natural to ask if there be then other gods ; but the difficulty vanishes, if in every such passage we bear in mind the meaning of the word, and read powers. Exodus, xv., 11 ; xviii., 11. 11. Chronicles ii.,5; Psalm, lxxxvi., 8; xcvii., 7,9. cxxxv.,s; cxxxviii.. 1. He, says Moses', is Elohim of Elohim, the one power above 'all others. Deuteronomy x., 17; Psalm cxxxvi,

The word elohim is used also for the mighty ones of the earth, those who have authority over the peoples. Exodus xxii., 28. In Psalm lxxxii., the source of all power is represented as standing among the el— that is, the strong ones. Elohim judireth among the elohim. John x., 34-36. The accusation is laid against them (verses 2-5); they have forgotten the precept given to those who rule their fellow-men. 11. Samuel xxiii., 3, Isaiah i„ 17, 23, Jeremiah v., 2729. Micah iii„ 11, Zephaniah iii., 3. They have turned a deaf ear to warning. Psalm lxxxii., 3-5. Micah vii., 2-3. The judgment is pronounced, from which there is no escape. Psalm lxxxii., 6,7. The hearts of these elohim had been lifted up ; they had defied Him to whom they were responsible for the power He permitted them to hold. Now they are deposed, and that without remedy. Not like Elohim, but like men, they shall die, and fall for ever from their high place. 11. Kings xxiv., 14, 15. 11. Chronicles xxiv., 23, 25. Jeremiah lii., 10. Then the Psalmist, seeing that in this judgment of justice is the only hope, the onfy possible salvation, utters the longing cry, "Arise, 0 Elohim, judge the earth." And still, ceaseless as the songs of praise on high from this lower world there goes up continually the same heart-felt prayer, that He to whom all judgment is given (John v., 22, xvii., 2; Acts xvii., 31 ; Romans ii., 16 ; 11.' Timothy iv., 1) that He, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last (Rev. i., 17), will be pleased to come quickly (Revelation xxii., 20), for there is none other Name by which we may be saved (Acts iv., 12.

THE RECKONING OF FAITH. Many are greatly perplexed as to the meaning of the exhortation in the eleventh verse of the sixth of Romans : " Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, bur, alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

The perplexity, we venture to suggest, arises chiefly from not perceiving the distinction between reckon yourselves dead—and reckon yourselves dead unto sin. If the first were true it would be with our inner condition, or state of deadness, that Ave should be occupied. But it is not written, Reckon yourselves dead— Reckon yourselves dead unto siri. It is not to an experience of deadness, but to a course of action, and an attitude of soul in reference to sin, that the Apostle refers. This is evident, when we notice that the same person is both dead and alive at one and the same time. He is to regard himself as dead in relation to the old master, and alive in relation to the new. To obey the exhortation is to take up that position by faith— position of freedom from sin and of freedom unto God. Sin throughout this sixth chapter is regarded a? a master, who demands our service, who seeks to lord it over us, and who pays wages. The freedom referred to here is not freedom from sin's presence or appeals —but from sin's service. Service is the keythought of the whole passage. But before there can be true service there must be a deliverance from the authority and power of the old master. Only death can secure this. When the slave dies the slave-owner has no longer any claim on him. We must recognise the fact that we are completely identified with Christ in His death. That death is our death unto sin. And we must recognise the fact that we are united to Christ in His life. That life is our life unto God.—EH. H.

THY WILL BE DONE. Thy will is to bring the summer Into the hearts of men. The singing of birds in the morning hours, The noontide glory of myriad flowers, The healing beams, and the ripling streams, And the Eden life again. Thy will is to make men holy With the gift of Christ to all; Is to h\iiish sin from the weeping earth, And fill the ciMes with sweet., trufi mirth, And make Love king : ll the world shall sing In. a joyous festival. Thy will is to make men happy Through the of a load of care ; Is to make the lives of the children glad, While even the aged are not sad; And to lift hope's light through the darkest night And to bring joy everywhere. Thy will is to make men wealthy With riches—a store untold ; With love and gentleness, joy and peace. And a plenteous harvest that shall not cease, : Of the true heart's good, and the daily food. Of love that is more than gold. Thy will is the world's redemption— The world to its saviour given. ■ O Father! soon may the morning break, i And the prayer be answered for Jesus' sake, Thy kingdom come and Thy will be done On earth, as it is in Heaven. Marianne Farningham.