21 NOVEMBER (PREACHED 1770)
Reverence and humility before God
‘While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud.’ Luke 9:34
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Job 42:1–6
The disciples feared as they entered the cloud. From hence I would take occasion to observe that the manifestations of the Lord’s presence have a tendency to humble and abase the Lord’s people, to convince them of their nothingness and unworthiness before him, and at the same time that they are comforted with a sense of his love, they are awed with the consideration of his glorious majesty. By this you may try your spirits. There is a confidence and liberty promised in the gospel—they who have access to God by Christ may come with boldness, they may draw near as children to a father, they may use a holy importunity in prayer—yet when faith is indeed in lively exercise and this liberty is most improved, there will be likewise great reverence and humiliation before God. When God dealt familiarly with Abraham and conversed with him as a friend, Abraham fell on his face before him. When the Lord appeared to vindicate Job and to comfort him after his sorrows, he abhorred himself in dust and ashes. That we can often approach the Most High God with a kind of indifference, as if it were a thing of course, is a proof rather of the hardness of our hearts, than of the strength of our faith. The angels are represented as hiding their faces before him—with what humility then should we poor, sinful dust and ashes take his holy name upon our polluted lips!
FOR MEDITATION: Give me a humbling sense of my sins, give me a humbling view of thy glory, give me a humbling taste of thy love, for surely nothing humbles like these. All my pride springs from ignorance. Grant me to know myself, to know thee, to know my relation to thee, and my dependence upon thee, my unprofitableness and insufficiency before thee; and the extent and importance of the mercies I continually receive from thee.
Miscellaneous Thoughts, 1758
SERMON SERIES: ON THE TRANSFIGURATION, NO. 8 [4/5], LUKE 9:34
Milo 