Faithfulness & Pleasing God
The Rechabites – Example of Faithfulness
Text: Jeremiah 35
It is the general tendency amongst men to ask what is the practice of the majority; what is done by those in their rank and station; and what will be expected of them. We drift with the current. We allow our lives to be settled by our companions or our whims, our fancies or our tastes; and if ever we have a momentary qualm, in contrasting our lives with the standards of primitive simplicity, of which Scripture and old biographies are full, we excuse ourselves by saying that so long as the main purpose is right the details are unimportant. This reasoning is wrong. We make a grave mistake in supposing that the main purpose of our life is something different from that which reveals itself in details. What we are in the details of our life, that we are really and essentially. The truest photographs are taken when we are unprepared for the operation. The true man, therefore, is always settling his life in its details as well as in its main direction, according to great principles. Before we go another step, let me entreat my readers not to allow themselves to do or permit things simply because custom, taste or public opinion advocates them, but to bring their entire life to the touchstone of some elementary law of the Kingdom of Heaven which shall do in the moral what gravitation does in the physical sphere, ordaining the course of worlds and of molecules of dust.
And if it be asked, What principle is far-reaching enough in its scope, and powerful enough in its force, for so great a work?, let us ponder what William Law so perpetually insists upon in his Serious Call: “The first and most fundamental principle of Christianity is an intention to please God in all our actions. It is because the generality of Christians have no such intention that they fall so short of true devotion.” And, indeed, when we consider the characters of the early disciples of Jesus, or those saints, martyrs and confessors, must we not admit that there were as scrupulous in seeking the will of God about the trifles of their life, as the Rechabites were in consulting the will and pleasure of the dead Jonadab? The thought of God was as present with the one, as of Jonadab with the other. And was not this the secret of their strong and noble lives?
What a revolution would come to us all if it became the one fixed aim and ambition of our lives to do always those things that are pleasing in His sight! It would not make us less tender in our friendships, or less active in our service...But it would check many a vain word, arrest many a silly jest, stop much selfish and vainglorious expenditure, and bring us back to whatever things are true, honourable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report.
F.B. Meyer, Jeremiah, pages 96-98, CLC, 1972
It is the general tendency amongst men to ask what is the practice of the majority; what is done by those in their rank and station; and what will be expected of them. We drift with the current. We allow our lives to be settled by our companions or our whims, our fancies or our tastes; and if ever we have a momentary qualm, in contrasting our lives with the standards of primitive simplicity, of which Scripture and old biographies are full, we excuse ourselves by saying that so long as the main purpose is right the details are unimportant. This reasoning is wrong. We make a grave mistake in supposing that the main purpose of our life is something different from that which reveals itself in details. What we are in the details of our life, that we are really and essentially. The truest photographs are taken when we are unprepared for the operation. The true man, therefore, is always settling his life in its details as well as in its main direction, according to great principles. Before we go another step, let me entreat my readers not to allow themselves to do or permit things simply because custom, taste or public opinion advocates them, but to bring their entire life to the touchstone of some elementary law of the Kingdom of Heaven which shall do in the moral what gravitation does in the physical sphere, ordaining the course of worlds and of molecules of dust.
And if it be asked, What principle is far-reaching enough in its scope, and powerful enough in its force, for so great a work?, let us ponder what William Law so perpetually insists upon in his Serious Call: “The first and most fundamental principle of Christianity is an intention to please God in all our actions. It is because the generality of Christians have no such intention that they fall so short of true devotion.” And, indeed, when we consider the characters of the early disciples of Jesus, or those saints, martyrs and confessors, must we not admit that there were as scrupulous in seeking the will of God about the trifles of their life, as the Rechabites were in consulting the will and pleasure of the dead Jonadab? The thought of God was as present with the one, as of Jonadab with the other. And was not this the secret of their strong and noble lives?
What a revolution would come to us all if it became the one fixed aim and ambition of our lives to do always those things that are pleasing in His sight! It would not make us less tender in our friendships, or less active in our service...But it would check many a vain word, arrest many a silly jest, stop much selfish and vainglorious expenditure, and bring us back to whatever things are true, honourable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report.
F.B. Meyer, Jeremiah, pages 96-98, CLC, 1972
