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Christ is Our Only Hope, February 8
Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things
are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
Hebrews 4:13
.
The Lord is a God of knowledge. In His Word, He is represented as weighing
men, their development of character, and all their motives, whether they be good
or evil. Hannah, the mother of Samuel, the child granted her by God in answer to
her earnest entreaty, said, “The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions
are weighed” (
1 Samuel 2:3
). David declared, “Men of low degree are vanity,
and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether
lighter than vanity” (
Psalm 62:9
). Isaiah says, “Thou, most upright, dost weigh
the path of the just” (
Isaiah 26:7
). Solomon writes, “All the ways of a man are
clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits” (
Proverbs 16:2
). It is
for the eternal interest of everyone to search his own heart and to improve every
God-given faculty.
There are many important lessons for each to learn. Let all remember that
there is not a motive in the heart of any man that the Lord does not clearly see.
The motives of each one are weighed as carefully as if the destiny of the human
agent depended upon this one result. We need a connection with divine power,
that we may have an increase of clear light and an understanding of how to reason
from cause to effect. We need to have the powers of the understanding cultivated,
by our being partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that
is in the world through lust. Let us each one consider carefully the solemn truth:
God in heaven is true, and there is not a design however intricate, not a motive
however carefully hidden, that He does not clearly understand. He reads the secret
devising of every heart. Man may plan out crooked actions for the future, thinking
that God does not understand, but in that great day when the books are opened,
and every man is judged by the things written in the books, those actions will
appear as they are ....
There is no one, however earnestly he may be striving to do his best, who
can say, “I have no sin.” He who would say this would be under a dangerous
deception. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us” (
1 John 1:8
). How then can we escape the charge, “Thou art weighed in
the balances, and art found wanting”? We are to look to Christ. At infinite cost,
He has covenanted to be our representative in the heavenly courts, our Advocate
before God.—
Manuscript 23, February 8, 1906
, “A God of Knowledge by Whom
Actions Are Weighed.”
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