Let us go to the City!

Let us go to the City!




“…of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” Ecc 12:12


“The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to go to the city.” Ecc 10:15


There are many times I am forced to sit back and examine my spiritual habits. This is a healthy practice anyway, but there are times when I sink back into a spiritual slouching. It always requires examination of the use of the means of grace. How has my prayer life been lately? How about my time reading and meditating on the Word? Have I been fellowshipping with Christians of late? These are some of the questions that I ask myself. Most times the answer is blaringly obvious. Sometimes it is not.

If the answers to all these questions tell me that I truly have been clinging to the means of grace, trusting God to honor those means used, I usually know then what the answer is. It is found not in those questions alone but in the motivation to use the means. Too often I treat the means as a checklist in which if I perform them as routine I have arrived. So many times I have lost sight of Jesus Christ in my pursuit of Scriptural Truth. I content myself on meager portions of revelation but do not find room in my appetite for a full course. I get a sliver of truth but apprehend not the Truth Himself. Too frequently, I find reading of scripture to be an exercise of the intellect rather than of the soul. In this I fail to study God’s revelatory Word in the way prescribed: that I might find Christ.

“…of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” Ecc 12:12 It is a wearisome task to study long and hard if the study fail to achieve its aspiration. David desires only one thing… “One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.” Ps 27:4 He thirsts to be in the presence of God and behold His beauty. “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is… As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?” Ps 63:1; 42:1-2 Paul has this same heart in Philippians 3:8-10, “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death”.

There is a desperation in their voices. This is the desperation we must have when we journey God’s Word. Let it be that we seek Christ! Let be it that we behold His beauty, that we be satisfied to drink of His living waters, that we may know Him and adore Him! O come… let us adore Him! Let us lay ourselves prostrate at His feet. Kiss the Son, dear Christians! “O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.” Ps 95:6

It is foolish to go to the Scriptures in order to increase your mental comprehension alone. This method of Bible reading is laborious and wearisome. The Holy Bible is not merely a Divinely inspired instruction manual for life. It is a work of revelatory nature. It exists to reveal and glorify Jesus Christ. If we are not in step with the purpose of this book, we will most assuredly fail to profit from it in the way intended. “The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to go to the city.” Ecc 10:15 O that we would find that Great City, Jesus Christ in our studies!

Charles Spurgeon has been quoted telling a young preacher, “Don’t you know, young man, that from every town and every village and every hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road that leads to London? … So from every text in scripture there is a road towards the great metropolis, Christ. And my dear brother, your business is, when you get to the text, to say, what is the road that leads to Christ? … the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savour of Christ in it.”

Calvin says, “The scriptures should be read with the aim of finding Christ in them. Whoever turns aside from this object, even though he wears himself out all of his life in learning, he will never reach the knowledge of the truth.”

Let this be our ambition brethren. Grace be upon us all in this task! Amen.