Revelation 20:11-15 And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away… You are writing your own history, your own biography, the memoirs of yourself. A mysterious and invisible agency is silently tracing the records of your life. The waves in the sea write their history in the ripple marks, congealed in the sands; and so, the hidden and silent currents of our thoughts and feelings leave behind them permanent traces. What you write, God reads. Life is a history. We may classify men's lives as we do books. We have separate series on different subjects. 1. Life may be the history of mind — its growth, culture, and education — its thoughts, perplexities, and questionings — its researches and conclusions. And, yet, till we sit at the feet of the Great Teacher, and learn of Him, we shall never find rest for our souls. 2. Life may be the history of the affections. In some lives the affections determine the character. They are the freshness, the beauty, the strength and joy of life. They may be misplaced — they may degenerate into passions. Instead of being the strength of life, they may become the source of its weakness. A life without love to Christ is a life that does not know what love is, that has never read the literature of the spiritual realm, that has never found the love that passeth knowledge. 3. Life may be the history of the flesh. It may be a life in the flesh — the minding the things of the flesh; a life written in the letter, not in the spirit; a life in sensuous characters. If we live after the flesh, we shall die.Take another series of the books. 1. The book may contain the history of a life that has its ideal — its pattern — its standard. All its endeavours are after the higher life. He who has seen the perfect will never more be satisfied with the imperfect. He who has looked on the mark of the prize of his high calling of God in Christ Jesus, will forget the things that are behind, and reach forth unto those things that are before. But the book may contain the history of a life that has no ideal, no standard; that is, formless, shapeless, purposeless: a life that proposes to itself no end, that has no continuity, no cohesion, that is fragmentary and broken; a life, the scattered fragments of which can never answer any efficient purpose. We may look at another series. 2. In the book we may read the history of a brave life — a life that has its foundations in the everlasting principles of truth; that brings nothing but truth to the truth, and so builds up character; that offers stern resistance to all forms of evil, and does battle with all kinds of falsehood; that practises self-denial; that builds no cross for itself, and yet never fears any cross the world can build; that uses suffering as a sharp instrument for fashioning life, and bringing it into conformity to Christ. It may be a simple and quiet life of which we read the records — a life not wanting in its naturalness, its beauty, its fragrance. The true sons of God often live in obscurity; the world knoweth them not, but then — it knew Him not. 3. It may be the history of a useful life — a life essentially practical — the epitome of which may be found in the words descriptive of the life of Christ, "Who went about doing good." When you die, it may be said that you "rest from your labours, and that your works follow you." 4. The book may contain the history of a Christian life. It is the life of one who felt himself to be a sinner, and has looked out of himself for a Saviour — who has come with all his guilt to the Cross — whose trust is simply in the one Sacrifice for sins. 5. You may read a book that contains the history of an unreal life — a life professing to be Christian, but not a Christ-like life; a life that has "the form, but not the power," that has "a name to live, but is dead"; a life that adjusts with the greatest care the drapery of religion, that arranges all its folds, so that they may fall gracefully around it; a life that has the lamp, but not the oil in the vessel. There is another book which you may read every day — it is the history of a life that is, alas, very common — a life of indifference to everything spiritual. It does not positively reject, but it offers indifference to the Gospel: indifference to God's love, to Christ's death, to the Spirit's work, to all earnest and loving appeals. It is indifference that ruins men. There is only one more series which we can find time to glance at. 6. It is a worldly life which we are reading now. It thinks only of buying and selling and getting gain. With what sorrow we read the history of a life that is perverted and abused. But we cannot finish reading these books that are open to us without being impressed with the fact that many a life is the history of failure. There was failure at the beginning, failure in the middle, and failure at the end. The book may have this title — "The History of a Life that was a Failure." Some of you are young; you have a fair page; there is as yet no blot, no erasure has been made; you have life before you — it is unwritten. Take care what you write, for what is once written "is written." There can be no new edition, with its emendations and corrections. Ask God's Spirit to teach you, to help you, to guide you by His counsel. We may learn from the subject, "The Possibilities of Life." We may well be aroused from our apathy, and be ashamed of our indolence. Is there no end grand enough? Is there no prize sufficiently attractive? Why do we not exercise ourselves unto godliness? Do not confine all labour to the wants of the outward life. Strive for things that are worth striving for. "Work out your own salvation," etc. The books will be opened. We are to be judged out of the book which we ourselves have written. We are now framing the indictment; we are collecting the evidence; we are preparing the materials of judgment. We shall judge ourselves, and God will judge us. (H. J. Bevis.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. |
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