Evening Thoughts — March 28

He has filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he has sent empty away. Luke 1:53

BEWARE of placing any limit whatever to the grace of Jesus. Be your circumstances what they may, remember that "God is able to make all grace abound towards you; that you always, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work." Make no allowance for sin, frame no excuses for inactivity, shrink from no cross, be dis-heartened by no difficulty, give place to no temptation, yield to no excessive grief; for Jesus has spoken it, and He now speaks it to you, "My grace is sufficient for you." Since, then, the grace of Jesus is illimitable, take with you in your journeyings to the one Source of supply a vessel of large capacity, that you may receive abundantly. Remember that, as a believer in the Lord Jesus, "All things are for your sake, that the abundant grace might, through the thanksgiving of many, redound to the glory of God." Let your life be a perpetual traveling to this grace. Do not be satisfied with what you have already received. Go, again and yet again, to this Divine Fountain, taking every corruption as it is developed, every sin as it is felt, every sorrow as it rises, to Jesus; remembering for your encouragement, that though you have received much, yet "He gives more grace," and is prepared to give you much more than you have yet received.

Rejoice that the emptiness of the vessel is no plea against the filling of the vessel. If the Spirit of God has made you "poor in spirit," has wrought in you a "hungering and thirsting for righteousness," betake yourself to the grace of Jesus. The full vessel He needs not, nor does the full vessel want Him. He invites, He draws, He receives none save the empty. He will have all the honor of our salvation. He will magnify His grace in the creature's nothingness. Your emptiness shall eternally glorify His fullness. With the example and the words before me of him who styled himself the 'chief of sinners,' I hesitate not to encourage the greatest sinner to come to Christ. "Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy... And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." Truly might he exclaim, "By the grace of God I am what I am." Beware, then, I beseech you, of going to Christ for salvation in any other character than as an empty sinner. Had the vessels been brought other than empty, to receive the miraculous oil, they would have been refused, filled though they had been with ambrosia itself. Nothing should mingle with the oil. Nothing should shade the luster of the miracle. And so is it with the grace of Jesus. Brilliant genius, profound erudition, costly benevolence, and the purest ethics of natural religion, avail nothing in the matter of the soul's salvation. These are the ambrosia, of which the vessel must be emptied before it comes to Christ. It must all be laid aside as constituting a plea of acceptance. The only plea admissible with Christ is, that without His grace you perish forever. "Lord, save, or I perish."