CHRIST THE COMPLEMENT OF OUR NEED - F.B.Meyer

We have now dealt with the will, and have seen that our curse is the self, life. We have also learned that Jesus Christ can take the place of self. I want now to show what Jesus Christ can be, and may the Holy Spirit glorify Christ!
1Co_10:11 : ‘Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.”
Once we were in Egypt. Every one who has been redeemed by the blood of Christ was once in Egypt. Egypt stands for three things:
(1) Sensual pleasure, leeks, garlics, onions;
(2) Bondage, the taskmaster, the brick, and the treasure city; and,
(3) Anguish of soul. I suppose there is not one now in Christ that does not remember rite sensual pleasure, the bondage and the anguish of soul. Out of that God has brought us. He brought us when He brought Christ through death to resurrection, and He brought us when each one (as it were) was sheltered beneath the Paschal Lamb, and the blood spoke to God. Oh blessed moment when we entered into peace, when we put the blood upon the door post and the lintel, and because God saw the blood we were ransomed, and in joy went forth from the land of bondage!
And as we stood upon the further shore of the Red Sea we repeated Miriam’s Song, we rejoiced in God our Savior. We gave ourselves up to follow the cloud, we sheltered beneath it by day and by night. We depended upon God for everything–for the water that gushed from the rock, and the manna that fell upon the desert floor. O happy, happy, happy days when we, fresh redeemed and with the consciousness of liberty, walked with God in the first hours of our conversion!
Then we came beneath Sinai. We obtained a new thought of God’s holiness and righteousness, and as we first came there we said with all the fervor of a true intention: “Whatever God says, we will do.” But our joy began to pass away, for as we tried to keep the law of “God we fell hour by hour into sin that we loathed. It was the experience of the seventh chapter of Romans. After the inward man we loved the law of God, but when we came to do what we would we found we could not. We were like men raised from some illness, who know how to walk perfectly well, but when they begin they totter, and presently fall to the ground.
After staying there, we heard the command of God to arise and depart, and after some days we came to Kadesh-barnea. Now Kadesh is on the frontier of the land of Canaan. At Kadesh the rolling prairie sinks into the sand and waste of the desert. At Kadesh you looked back on Egypt, and forward into Palestine. To Kadesh there came spies, bringing in their hands baskets full of fruit which they had gathered in the Land of Promise, grapes, pomegranites, apricots, sweet and luscious fruit. At Kadesh you passed them round, you ate, you said: ” It is a good land.”
Many of you have been to Kadesh. You took lodgings there–at Northfield, at Keswick conventions; and men who have been over into the Land of Promise came back, and in their addresses and books they gave you a basket of fruit, and you said: “It is very good.”
But there you stopped, and instead of going over the frontier and living in the land, you have gone BACK TO THE DESERT.
Why did Israel stop there? Because she did not believe God. She believed that God could bring her from Egypt, but she could not believe that God could bring her to Canaan. She believed in the God of the past, but she could not believe in the God of every moment. She had an evil heart of unbelief, and departed from the living God.
You believe in Calvary, but not in the ascension. You believe in Christ who died, but not in Christ who rose and lives. You believe in conversion as a past fact, but you have no idea that He who converted you is prepared hour by hour to bring you into and to keep you in the Land of Rest.
The wilderness stands for three things.
First. Restlessness; a redeemed people, but restless. There is a chapter in Numbers, and thirty-three times in it we are told that the people removed. That, has been your life for years, to and fro, trying this church and that, this minister and that minister, but all the while certain that you have not got God’s rest.
Secondly. It stands for discontent; they murmured. And what a murmuring life yours is! You have got riches, love, happy, happy surroundings, but there is always something that you want altered. Discontent! If it is summer, it is too hot. If it is winter, it is too cold. If you have love you want money, and if you have money you want love. Backwards and forwards, full of restless murmuring and discontent. That has been your life as a Christian. Thirdly. It stands for back-yearning, yearning backwards. The people had come out of Egypt, but they were always thinking about it. And your life is a negative life. You are out of Egypt, but you go as near Egypt as you can, and you look over into the pleasures of Egypt, you look over into the doings of Egypt, you look over into the passions and sins of Egypt, and though you are out of it your heart hungers after it. You are a Christian, but a worldly man has a happier time than you, for the worldly man has never had a glimpse of what you have. He is contented. You have enough religion to make you wretched.
What next? You came to Jordan. The poet has taught us to think that Jordan means death, the death of the body; but that is a false conception. In God’s imagery the Jordan stands for death, but not the death of the body, but death to the self-life. I trust I have made it clear that I do not believe that self ever dies. I do not believe in the eradication of self, out I believe we come to the cross, to Jordan, and we put the cross, the death of Christ, between ourselves and our past life. We pass through the Jordan in our own experience when we unite ourselves with Christ’s death, and are planted with Him in the likeness of His death. After that we stand in the land of Canaan.
At Kadesh you looked over, but now you are in. You do not feel much. When you awoke you thought you would feel joy, but it is not so. You are quiet and still. Never mind! A man may cross the equator and not know it. The equator is marked on the map, but not on the ocean, and a man may cross it and not know it. Without emotion or passion, relying upon the Holy Ghost to make your reckoning true, you have passed Jordan, you are now in the land.

F.B.Meyer