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Christ’s Object Lessons
Many are constantly questioning, “Wherewith shall I come before
the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before
Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord
be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of
oil?” But “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth
the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to
walk humbly with thy God?”
Micah 6:6-8
.
This is the service that God has chosen—“to loose the bands of
wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go
free, and that ye break every yoke, ... and that thou hide not thyself
from thine own flesh.”
Isaiah 58:6, 7
. When you see yourselves as
sinners saved only by the love of your heavenly Father, you will have
tender pity for others who are suffering in sin. You will no longer meet
misery and repentance with jealousy and censure. When the ice of
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selfishness is melted from your hearts, you will be in sympathy with
God, and will share His joy in the saving of the lost.
It is true that you claim to be a child of God; but if this claim be
true, it is “thy brother” that was “dead, and is alive again; and was
lost, and is found.” He is bound to you by the closest ties; for God
recognizes him as a son. Deny your relationship to him, and you show
that you are but a hireling in the household, not a child in the family
of God.
Though you will not join in the greeting to the lost, the joy will go
on, the restored one will have his place by the Father’s side and in the
Father’s work. He that is forgiven much, the same loves much. But
you will be in the darkness without. For “he that loveth not knoweth
not God; for God is love.”
1 John 4:8
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