2006-10-28 - Illustrations From Nature: 2

Psalm 19:1, "The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands."

This is the second of three short glances into nature and how it can teach us little lessons by the simplest things. I only have in mind to do three of these unless they are viewed a particularly helpful or interesting. If they are, please let me know, and I will continue with the theme from time to time. Here is the second installment. Christian Graces: The hen is interesting. She will have her eggs and sit on them, keeping them warm - and if you remove half of them, she will still sit. Remove ¾ of them, and she will still sit there contentedly.

Christians are sometimes like the hen. The cares of the world, the anxieties of life come along and stamp out many of their graces, yet like the hen they sit there, happy as they were before. Our spiritual instincts ought to be greater than a silly bird. To lose a little of our Christian grace, zeal, or practice is to lose a great deal. To have any of our communion with Christ taken away from us in any area of our life is to experience a loss of an incredible spiritual blessing.

What is written to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:4? "But I have this against you, that you have left your first love." My friends, if you have lost any of the blessed graces you once had, do not be satisfied to remain in that condition. Never be a happy hen if some of your Christian graces and zeal have departed from you, but seek the Lord, and strive to regain what you once had.

Snow: Snow can be a delight, but also a royal pain. It is also an example to us. "Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord, "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool," Isaiah 1:18. When snow is freshly fallen from Heaven, it is white as white gets. Put almost anything white next to it, and it looks pale, yellow, even dark, in comparison to the snow. This promise then comes to us like the snow comes from Heaven. In ourselves, our sins are red like crimson, but in the righteousness of Christ, we are made like fresh fallen snow: clean, pure, undefiled. This is why the imputation of Christ's righteousness is such a comfort. We are given, in salvation, His purity, His cleanliness, and we are viewed in His purity.

Sin and Spiders: Have you ever come upon a newly hatched nest of spiders? As they crawl out of the one egg, there are hundreds of them. One nest, one egg - and yet they quickly fill the web with their presence. It is much the same with sin. Every sin is a nest, and left to endure, it will cover the web with it's myriad of sins that accompany it. Like one spiders nest quickly becomes a city of spiders, so one sin quickly becomes a colony of sin, a nest of iniquity. Stir the nest, and like the spiders scurrying about, so the true nature of sin, when allowed and permitted, will aggravate itself into a whole progression of sins.

Soli Deo Gloria,
T-

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