Reader! exult more and more in this all-prevailing Advocate. See that ye approach the mercy-seat with no other trust but in His atoning work and meritorious righteousness. There was but One solitary man of the whole human race who, of old, in the Jewish temple, was permitted to speak face to face with Jehovah. There is but one solitary Being in the vast universe of God who, in the heavenly sanctuary, can effectually plead in behalf of His Spiritual Israel. “Seeing, then, that we have a Great High Priest passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, ... let us come boldly to the throne of grace.” If Jesus delights in asking, God delights in bestowing. Let us put our every want, and difficulty, and perplexity, in His hand, feeling the precious assurance, that all which is really good for us will be given, and all that is adverse will, in equal mercy, be withheld. There is no limitation set to our requests. The treasury of grace is flung wide open for every suppliant. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name He will give it you.” Surely we may cease to wonder that the Great Apostle should have clung with such intense interest to this elevating theme—the Saviour’s intercession;—that in his brief, but most comprehensive and beautiful creed,[19] he should have so exalted, as he does, its relative importance, compared with other cognate truths. “It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” Climbing, step by step, in the upward ascent of Christian faith and hope, he seems only to “reach the height of his great argument” when he stands on “the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense.” There, gazing on the face of the great officiating Priest who fills all heaven with His fragrance, and feeling that against that intercession the gates of hell can never prevail, he can utter the challenge to devils, and angels, and men, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
XVI.
The Omnipotent Summons.
The moment has now come for the voice of Omnipotence to give the mandate. The group have gathered around the sepulchral grotto—the Redeemer stands in meek majesty in front—the teardrop still glistening in His eye, and that eye directed heavenward! Martha and Mary are gazing on His countenance in dumb emotion, while the eager bystanders bend over the removed stone to see if the dead be still there. Yes! there the captive lies—in uninvaded silence—attired still in the same solemn drapery. The Lord gives the word. “Lazarus come forth!” peals through the silent vault. The dull, cold ear seems to listen. The pulseless heart begins to beat—the rigid limbs to move—Lazarus lives! He rises girt in the swaddling-bands of the tomb, once more to walk in the light of the living.
Where Scripture is silent, it is vain for us to picture the emotions of that moment, when the weeping sisters found the gloomy hours of disconsolate sorrow all at once rolled away. The cry of mingled wonder and gratitude rings through that lonely graveyard,—“This our brother was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found!”
O most wondrous power—Death vanquished in his own territory! The sleeper has awoke a moral Samson, snapping the withs with which the King of Terrors had bound him. The star of Bethlehem shines, and the Valley of Achor becomes a door of hope. The all-devouring destroyer has to relinquish his prey.
Was the joy of that moment confined to these two bosoms? Nay! The Church of Christ in every age may well love to linger around the grave of Lazarus. In his resurrection there is to His true people a sure pledge and earnest of their own. It was the first sheaf reaped by the mower’s sickle anticipatory of the great Harvest-home of the Final day “when all that are in their graves” shall hear the same voice and shall “come forth.”[20]