The Secret of the Lord

Extract

The Secret of the Lord – John Kennedy

“The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him” Psalm 25:14.

All true Christians are peculiar. Their singular character and their exclusive privileges make them so. The Lord causes them to differ from all others by what He does in them, and by what He does for them. He creates a new heart in them, and they fear Him. He puts His spirit within them, and makes known to them His mind. Into their soul He infuses life, and into their ear He speaks His secrets. Fearers of God are thus favourites of God; and both as His fearers and His favourites they are a peculiar people. I. True Christians differ from all others because they only fear the Lord. “I will put my fear within them” is a promise fulfilled to them all, and to them only. Covenant grace was put within them ere covenant secrets were made known to them. Those who fear the Lord are, and must be, quickened souls. They were once dead in sins, but they are now alive to God; and they live because they were “quickened together with Christ.” The fear of God is just the life of God in them suitably responding to the manifestation of “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” These realise God as others do not. They know Him as none else do know Him. They alone approve of His character and appreciate His greatness. There are Godward movements in their hearts as in no hearts besides. Of them only does the Lord say, “they shall not depart from Me.”

A soul, spiritually dead, may be moved by an enslaving dread of God; but there can be no Godward advances in such a case. Farther and farther from God will that soul depart, who, left unrenewed, feels the terrors of His wrath. What causes his fear inflames his enmity. The more helpless he feels before the fire of God’s anger, the more active is his enmity before the brightness of God’s purity. Fearing and hating Him at once, the unquickened soul departeth from the living God. …